Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman 
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 19, 2012 21:47:35 GMT -5
This late in the dying season, the ocean was more hospitable than the lake. Though the lukewarm saltwater could only ebb over old scars, Q'sis could imagine what healing balm might have settled over his wounds had he been less terrestrial when younger. Maybe reduced the festering spread of those that had passed to infection, loosened the white trim of dead hide on others. A few gurgling shipfish had approached him earlier in the afternoon, more interested in him than the hulking tan buoy by his side. Gray fins had nudged curving dorsal fins to his palm, and when that earned no response they tried with some difficulty the ballet of steering flipper to human hand, and finally the blunt invasion of their rough beaks.
Now the sun was flushing out of the sky, and the fish had left to feed. Q'sis turned his head toward the sparking of glowbaskets along the shoreside foothills. Each fishcrafter home had one over the door, storage or catch processing facilities blazing two or three. The sides of the docks lit up like luminescent tunnelsnakes in parallel. He loosed the kelp knot he'd used to anchor himself by the ankle, turning over onto his stomach and letting his legs drift low.
A stream of firelizards marched out over the dock airspace, and Q'sis followed them till a piny screech from a faltering green forced him to turn away. Out to sea. He searched forward, his body a probe, and promptly stubbed his toes on the molluscan jewelry of a sandbar. Biting his lower lip, he pushed his foot more carefully along the grainy ledge, and found a soft spot to climb. He lunged up onto the crest of the bar and rose, the water now a glittering slick around his bare ankles.
This is my sexy face.
The silhouette of the man turned his shadowy head toward the dragon bobbing beside the sandbar. Under the theatricality of sunset, Unath's klah color ripened to umber along the edges, saddles of murk defining the articulation of muscles along her chest and flank. Clasped in her raised forearms was a clam wider than Q'sis was tall (he had taught her to dig them up, but let her puzzle out the opening of the rippling valves on her own). A fringe of bubbles dribbled from the clamp in its carapace and laced the sea.
She cocked her wings out when he looked, arching her neck till the thickness of it bulged her skin tight, stretching the creamy dapples across the top. Films of water highlighted the textural adjustment to shiny bonestuff where her ruddy neckridges curved out of her spine. She had contracted her face to a thin, predatory gravity, green facets aglow under the eaves of her eyeridges.
The forks and an additional third of her tongue bubbled out the end of her mouth. Her nostrils flared, blasting a spray of sea foam into the air like smoke.
"Your face is always sexy."
Unath's perfected head-holding listed a few inches askew at this comment and stayed frozen that way, neck pulsing with an uncertain commitment to maintaining its dramatic bunching.
It is like yours. It was Q'sis' turn to be taken aback.
"I do not make that face at any time," he retorted firmly, but Unath was not swayed.
No. Yes, she reiterated, tossing her head around so that her loose tongue flopped up and down like a bloated slug. Q'sis stared in brief fascination, then blinked hard and shook his head.
"Stop," he commanded rather than continuing the argument. Unath sucked in her tongue and peeked back down at him without the impressive thickening in her throat. "That's better." The tan leaned in, prodded her nose against his sternum, then flicked him off his feet with little effort. In his new seated position, Q'sis extended his legs over the brim of the sandbar into the water. Satisfied with this development, Unath looked out across the water with him. A long, reverberating cry of dragonsong built in her lungs and emptied to the world as she flexed her wings.
Man and queen both turned head over shoulder as a reply rang out from shore.
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Lan
Weyrlingmaster 
lanct[M:-1025]
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Post by Lan on Oct 22, 2012 1:11:12 GMT -5
It was Autumn. F'ton sighed as he acknowledged this fact, looking out at the shrunken form of the distant Dalibor Weyr from his place between Poseith's shoulder blades. He had taken most of the morning to visit his mother and father back home at Crescent, delighting in the closeness of family. His father was quick and eager to show him the new members of the Crescent pod and F'ton was happy to meet with Lippa again. She was getting old, though. They all were. His father, Feanen, was almost sixty turns of age now. His mother was almost fifty. This made his eldest sister almost forty and his younger sister almost twenty. Even he had gotten older, now bonded to Poseith for four and a half turns. So long it had been. It seemed like such a short amount of time, looking back. Yet, even his young niece was thirteen now--the age most weyrborn children begin to stand as Candidates. Where had all his time gone? Furthermore, where was it going?
The iron glided most of the way back from Crescent, occasionally pumping his wings a couple of times if he couldn't catch a thermal to keep him at the altitude he liked. I have not met her, Poseith told F'ton as they drew closer to Dalibor, his mental voice consisting of the mellow, distant quality that was usual in most of their exchanges. F'ton tilted his head to the side, brows furrowing just a bit at the statement. My sister or my niece? He asked, assuming that Poseith had been reading his thoughts. He received no reply. Would you like to? The ironrider supposed that, what with betweening being an efficient way of travel and all, that he could arrange a meeting between whichever relation Poseith desired to meet. He'd have to send a letter to his sister, though, in advance. Filena was hard to get a hold of at the best of times; she so liked to keep busy.
Yes, Poseith replied after a long pause as he shifted his angle to begin his descent. It wasn't until the beach came closer into view, though, that F'ton finally realized that it wasn't the angle he was accustomed to. Where are you going?
The beach. The iron's mental tone now took on a slight hint of matter-of-fact. F'ton puzzled over this, until he saw the pale brown of a tan's hide against the watery shore. Oh. You meant her.
Yes. Poseith tilted at a sharper angle, then proceeded to back-wing as he landed just a little ways down the stretch from where Unath and Q'sis had been swimming. You got to swim. It is my turn. While F'ton had been greeting the shipfish with his father, Poseith had been told to stay out of the water so that some of the newer members of the pod wouldn't be frightened. Of course, the iron found this completely ridiculous. He was not at all scary. He did heed F'ton's father's advice, however, and had viewed the spectacle from where he had decided to sun. Now, though, he wanted to swim. Surely there were no fish that would be afraid of dragons this close to a Weyr.
F'ton dismounted, then beckoned Poseith to kneel down a bit more so that he could remove to flying straps. Practiced hands removed them quickly enough, though, and they were discarded on a rock while F'ton removed his own flying gear. Poseith placated himself waiting for his rider to undress so that they could swim together, but his attentions were diverted at the sound of the queen's cry. Transfixed, he left his rider behind as he waded into the water then, drawing himself up to his full height, bellowed a reply back. Are you coming? The iron asked his rider, looking back over his shoulder with calm blue eyes. In a minute. Poseith nodded and continued into the water where he began to swim toward his new tan acquaintance.
Hello, Unath. He recollected her name as his mind touched against hers for the brief greeting. She was younger than him (only one tan had been present at his hatching and it had not been her), but that hardly mattered to the short memory of a dragon. Her rider certainly didn't bother him. However, he gave them both a respectful distance until he was told otherwise that he was welcome. Briefly he dipped under the water, then surfaced again and shook his head to send salty spray every which way. Quickly he looked over his shoulder to see if his rider had followed, only to see F'ton lying on his back in the sand stripped down to his bottom layer of clothing. Nothing was made of the observation and Poseith instead turned his head upward to look at the sky as another dragon flew far overhead.
F'ton was busy pondering other trinkets, the necklace he had bought for Fahra turns before now having found its way into his fiddling hands. Faranth, he was pathetic. They had been best friends for over four turns now and he couldn't even bring himself to give her the necklace he had bought especially for her. It was so easy giving her a wooden carving--something he had made with his own two hands. Buying something for her was different, though. He couldn't explain why, but the prospect of giving something to her he had exchanged money for scared him half-way to between. Well, at least this far away from the Weyr he could lie on the cool sand and ponder the pathetic attempts of his social life in solitary peace, right? Even Echelon was gone, having stayed behind to make sure that Doll was okay during his and Poseith's absence. However, with that tan and her rider just a little ways off his hope for lonely thoughts could probably not last long.
|| ooc : ONE THOUSANDTH POST! WHOOO! =D |
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 23, 2012 17:26:59 GMT -5
Unath was first to proceed in-shore toward the interlopers. Q'sis merely planted his palms back at either side and leaned on them, turning his face out to the wind. The tan kicked her back legs, quick to encounter the bottom of the harbor with her sickle talons and claw her way up to a comfortable partial-floatiness on her belly. Her front paws were still occupied with the hardshell bivalve she'd harvested and yet been unable to open. Its foamy lip hovered far ahead of the rest of her, like an offering. Her mind, weathered thin by Q'sis' frequent usage, reeled at the direct address by the pale iron. Familiar voices like Agnith's or Oferrath's had already become a part of her. The muscular bolus of this new thought spilled over into the emptiness that was Unath, a space polluted by her rider's many handholds. A pulse of soul in the distance signaled her attempt at a response before she made it: it took time to coalesce.
Hi. I'm Unath. She dropped her clam as she spoke, but did not seem to notice as it settled to a dim new life in the grainy shallows under her feet. Her blunted snout lifted toward Poseith. She sniffed, caught the stony liquer of him above the cold salt of the sea, and her thoughts flexed together, pieces beginning to interlock like velcro threads. The association was tenuous, temporary, and even as she hunkered toward him on the verge of further interest, they fell back apart. She looked down at her empty forepaws, then turned the left one up so she could squint at her empty palm.
Then she looked back up at Poseith. Hello, the tan twittered, excited anew to see him. I am Unath. On the sand bar, Q'sis' eyes had drifted off the sea and down, like his dragon's, to his hand and the sand giving to the grip of his fingers. Unath almost lost her thread of fascination with Poseith again, but after a moment's very private hesitation he gave her brain a little bracing, a framework from which to conduct a coherent conversation with what he imagined would be a very bemused king.
King, he repeated to himself, smirking. Surprisingly easy vernacular when he recalled that he had sworn it off. It wasn't for mutants. But these days it was an easier class to swallow than "queen." He suspected this deformation of principle was entirely due to R'len, rider of Unath's sire, and mostly everything a dragon-man should be. He did bed with a red, but he couldn't expect the moon here at Dalibor. Kaezeth was decent. Most irons were, even for false royalty. But though Q'sis loved the dragons, they would never sway him on anything.
That had to be done by the ones who lived in the world the same way as he did. By men.
He slid off the sandbar beside the dragons and made his way to shore. This Poseith was no Kaezeth, and he'd heard even more infuriating things about the infant's limp bondmate. But they had approached him, whatever their reasons, and he did not avoid a show just out of dislike for his audience.
Unath had heard the word too. King. She watched Poseith and tried to connect him and the word, but could not find the meaning. Q'sis did not fill in the blank, and he swam past her now without a second glance. Unath did not look after him, either. She shelved the notion of kings and moons, and turned around, sliding back out of the shallows into the depths ringing the sandbar. Putting a claw up on the place where her rider had sat, she looked back to see if Poseith was still shadowing her.
I am big, she asserted, the mental note accompanied by a heavy chomp of her thick jaws, halfway to regality- or insanity, if one suspected any red mixing her chocolate hide. Her mind was still so close to Poseith's that the iron might just see the scrape of her rider against her less orderly impulses, like the brief notion to expose her sexy face. Q'sis no longer shied away from draconic contact, having been forced into tolerance of it given all the time he spent occupying his love. Unath's blankness wasn't more than the veneer, but she was still there when he allowed it.
Like right now. Are you going to fall? she asked Poseith, and it was just her, for all that counted.
Q'sis walked out of the sea and stared down at F'ton. Eyes as dark with intelligence as spite narrowed at the other man.
"Going to keep playing with it," he proposed meaningfully. "Or just give in and put it on?"
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Lan
Weyrlingmaster
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Post by Lan on Nov 5, 2012 2:09:42 GMT -5
Poseith, on his end, was highly confused by the tan's response. He cocked his head to the side, like a hound that had heard something he wasn't familiar with, and replied, Hello. A moment later, though, she seemed to forget him. At least, her secondary response would seem to imply that. The iron, confused as to what else he might do, offered again his previous reply, Hello. He stopped moving in the water now, maintaining a comfortable distance between himself and this strange female. The next course of action was unknown to him. So familiar he was with dealing with lady dragons that were so sure of themselves, he didn't know what to do with himself when confronted with one that was... well... so placid. After his pause he hummed encouragingly to her, passing along kind and gentle feelings that perhaps might stick with her better. He was perhaps a bit surprised when she spoke again, this time to convince him of her stature.
Yes, he agreed, watching her chomp her jaws and feeling the oddities of her mind as they spoke. He couldn't place what he felt there, only could discern that it was different from the mind of any other dragon he had made contact with. However, he was sure now she was not going to endanger him or be displeased with his presence, so he allowed himself to swim closer to her in the water.
Are you going to fall? Poseith paused again at the question, the familiar tilt of his head returning as his eyes swirled from blue to green at the oddness of the question. He thought about it for a minute, hazarding a glance at the water beneath him and what he could see of the bottom of their deep stretch of water, then replied most definitively, I do not believe so. He decided then that it was best to wait there until she gave any further indication she was okay with him lounging next to her.
F'ton was so enthralled with his little pendant that he failed to notice the very, very tall man approaching from out of the sea. He didn't notice until the man was practically standing over him that he was not alone. For a moment he had the look of a wherry trapped in a dragon's jaw, afraid but silent as his cheeks turned a fainter pink color. Then, quickly, he returned to his normal blank expression and sat up, tucking the necklace back into the pocket of his pants. "It's not meant for me," he responded plainly, his voice keeping its general monotone that was common when he wasn't flustered or agitated. Indeed, Q'sis had done nothing to irritate F'ton or make him anxious. Nudity was commonplace when he was an apprentice dolphineer and the question wasn't really uncalled for. It must have looked rather silly to see a grown man contemplating a necklace in such deep thought.
F'ton rolled up the legs of his trousers, then stood and walked to stand where the waves lapped gently over his feet. He stared off into the distance where their two dragons were probably engaged in their own estranged conversation, the cogs of his brain turning. He had heard only sparingly of the rider who he now found himself in company with. Q'sis' and Unath's names were known merely because Q'sis was the first male to ever Impress a subqueen. Other than that, he knew only that Q'sis had been held back for some reason or another. Those things hardly mattered, though. Without his own experiences with the man, he made no judgments.
Not knowing what else to say to continue the conversation, he began to examine the shoreline around him for pieces of driftwood. His own cache that he had used for carving had almost been used up and he required some more materials. Now seemed like just as good a time as any to collect some. "It's for a... girl... as you might imagine." The words were more hesitant than his previous ones. F'ton was not used to making conversation with strangers, although it was much easier to talk to someone of his own gender than of the opposite. He glanced over his shoulder at Q'sis, then back to a piece of wood he had picked up and was inspecting for its possibilities as far as carving purposes. |
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
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Post by Azhdarchid on Nov 7, 2012 16:37:14 GMT -5
Unath snuffled at him for his assurance, looked out at the broader sea, then paddled over to his side. She bumped her brown shoulder to his shining one, but the gentle act preceeded a flinging open of her spotty wings. She gaped her jaws and bugled at the other dragon, the rich blue velvet of her tongue flashing into view. Perhaps it was only that the tan was trying to measure him: her face to his, who had a bigger mouth? Bigger noisemaking capacity? A more intelligent or at least more observant dragon might have simply evaluated Poseith's size compared to things around him. After a moment Unath shut her mouth, but her jaw still worked as if she were licking up something inside her own mouth. Her eyes had been buzzing green throughout the encounter, but now they began to slow back to blue.
She started to swim out ahead of him, but found her progress very wobbly till she looked back and realized her wings were open. She shut them in one firm motion, but a motion punctuated by a series of minor, ruffling adjustments afterwards while she peeked over the speckly membranes at Poseith. A curious return on his mental seeking brought her in direct contact with the metal wall of his mind, and Unath arched her neck and chirrupped in surprise. Even if she was the more forward of the twins, she had never been much for contacting strange thoughts on her own. In this case she had sensed his investigation, and followed the line of it back to the whole of him like string through a maze. She did not really grasp what to do with the trophy at the center, though, so she turned out to the ocean.
For a moment she hovered at the surface, unmoving, almost starting to sink, and then she flicked her thick tail and surged forward to deeper waters. She glided out to where even her toes could not touch, not slowing even as she drifted far from shore.
You are Poseith, she said, as if reciting what she'd learned in a day lesson. Her head was not pointed at him, but her field of view was very wide: she was watching him from the corner of her eye. Her wings rustled against her back and she lowered herself into the water, till only the strong curve of her neck poked wetly out. I am the tag, the tan whispered in the breathless way a child planning a session of hooky might. But to punctuate the seriousness of this detail, she roared back over at the iron. If he had not quite evaluated any prior shenanigans as a challenge, let that stand!
"I might not imagine," Q'sis cut in. "We're at a Weyr, and you ride iron." But the edges of his smile quirked in jesterly betrayal, should F'ton pull his eyes off the sea long enough to look. He waved at the other man. "And if it was for a girl, and you were a real man, you would know it was right the first time you laid over Marks for it rather than sitting around and contemplating the thing." A flash of memory touched the back of his mind: a chain with a filigree of bloodred beads as a centerpiece. He had bought it and lodged it long ago when he had to be careful about exchanging such niceties with his own woman. But he had forgotten it, and it had never gone onto her neck anyway.
Well, F'ton didn't know that. Q'sis waded out to where the shallows pulsed just under his knees. "Here's a lark: you get halfway to the sandbar before I get all the way to it, and perhaps I will accept the possibility of you having a girl." He made a winding, unraveling motion at the other rider with one finger, indicating that F'ton had no chance if he did not at least dress to the occasion. "I'll wait." Q'sis crossed his arms, staring down the ironrider with no hint that he might avert his eyes. For his part, the twinrider boasted a nude that was mostly scar, and then some soft parts that weren't, mostly toward the center. His muscles were, of course, monstrous as a wher's. Every breath was outlined by the shifting of tight musculature. And had he come any closer, he would have been looking down on F'ton from about a foot over the top of the other's head. The dribbling last-hour sun beveled his silhouette in a muddy orange-gold, and where his brown skin wasn't discolored by old wounds, it gleamed like copper.
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Lan
Weyrlingmaster
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Post by Lan on Nov 18, 2012 22:58:57 GMT -5
Poseith watched, bemused, as Unath came up next to him, but he opened his mouth to appease her just the same. She was quite an odd dragon. He wasn't sure what to do with her, watching her out of one of his eyes as she bugled and compared the size of her open mouth to his. When she paused, he bugled back at her at a slightly quieter volume (although F'ton could still hear it loud and clear as it traveled over the water to far beyond the shore). When she shut her mouth he slowly shut his, trying not to make a sound as his metallic lips formed a seal back over his glistening teeth. He then resumed his previous employment of watching her as she swam ahead of him, wings still outstretched. Only once she shut them did he proceed to follow after her.
A tickle at his mind gave him pause and he watched her with eyes swirling from blue to green. He let her examine him, content to watch the speckled membranes of her wings folding and refolding while she experimented with touching his mind with hers. It was over in a moment, though, and the iron filed the encounter along with the other oddities during their visit. She continued out toward the deeper ocean and he followed, this time without hesitation. He had sensed in her examination that she meant him no harm and so he dropped some of his reservations.
Yes, he agreed with her statement, and you are Unath. Her second comment, however, left him a bit confused. The tag? He searched F'ton's mind for previous connections and his rider informed him briefly of the children's game. Like what you and Eriputh played but... without the sex. Poseith hummed conclusively. Yes. This seemed like a decent game.
Unath's roar spurred him on. The game had begun! Poseith roared back at her and kicked at the water with his claws to drive him forward. He would tag her! And then it would be him that would be chased! The game didn't really seem all that productive to the wise iron, but the tan wanted to play and that was enough for him.
Back at the shore, F'ton was feeling more than a bit confused himself. Q'sis first comment about riding an iron was lost on him and he turned his head to peer over his shoulder at the man too late to catch the signal of jest. So he chose not to respond to that and glanced back over at their dragons as one of the trumpets reached him from across the waves. However, he definitely felt the force of Q'sis' second musing. His cheeks reddened faintly in that moment and he was thankful that he was turned away to look at the ocean. It was true. He was probably far too placid of a person to deserve such a woman as Fahra, but she had stayed with him thus far... as his friend. Or... whatever they were. F'ton had never felt bold enough to ask. "You have a point," he told the tanrider, his voice soft and full of thought. He didn't really expect the other man to hear him, but he had to admit that some part of it might be true.
Q'sis waded out into the water farther than him and F'ton watched blank-faced as a challenge was issued. Swimming to the sandbar and back? The brunette young man judged the distance with a gaze of his eye and considered what Q'sis was challenging. Such games were kids stuff, reserved for his earliest years as an Apprentice Dolphineer. Of course, F'ton couldn't really blame Q'sis for thinking he wasn't up to the challenge... despite his strong swimming abilities he really didn't look like all that much.
"Fair enough," was all he said as he headed back over to where the rock was that held his riding jacket. He pulled his shirt over his head first, laying it in the clump atop his folded wher-hide jacket. His pants were next, although he did bother to unroll the legs before he cast them aside. After stripping bare he thoughtfully moved the necklace from his trouser pocket to the pocket of his riding jacket, then he moved to stand in the waves next to his temporary rival. He was definitely not as tough-looking as Q'sis. What muscles he did have were lean and streamlined, built more like a firelizard to Q'sis' wher-like physique. It served him well enough, though. Fast swimmers were never very bulky.
"Ready?" He asked in a level voice, catching Q'sis' eye to find some signal of when they would start. When the tanrider gave it, F'ton surged forward, moving almost gracefully into a shallow dive to propel himself under the first wave they hit. Then, of course, the race was on.
He was not quite as graceful of a swimmer as he had been during his years in his craft, but after a few awkward strokes he began to beat out a rhythm. His opportunities for breath served as the drumbeat of his stride, punctuating the end of each leg of the pattern and therefore also starting a new one. Occasionally a larger wave would lap over him and he'd dive under it before continuing on. F'ton paid absolutely no attention to what Q'sis was doing; as far as he was concerned this was a race against himself. The tanrider's presence was just an extra variable that he need not concern himself with until the end of their race. |
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
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Post by Azhdarchid on Nov 27, 2012 16:21:51 GMT -5
Q'sis smiled back at his stripling rival. One up-and-down was all he needed to take in the scrawny excuse of a rider. F'ton was soft as a baby.
The signal was the shift of the tanrider's eyes away from that pathetic near-markless skin toward the waves. Q'sis struck out for the bar in the same breath, though he went slower and deeper than F'ton in his first lunge. He had rhythm from the first rise of his arm, but the newer clots of scar tissue punched through his shoulders would restrict the range of his stroke for the rest of his life. Similar stories had been carved into his legs, where the knees flexed only by the chapped allowance of the hide that covered them. Q'sis had better practice in dealing with them however, and an unbent leg did not necessarily work against its purpose as a paddle. His chest swelled and pushed out limitless breath, and not an inch of him begged rest. He had practiced hauling loads on land and sea both, and with no such fettering, he flew.
Underlying the race was a briefly distinct sense of pursuit. Unath had fallen in with the game she'd demanded, and dove into the sea with wild abandon, descending fast into the dark spaces no living human eye could witness. Her hindclaws scraped into a seabed frilly with vegetation, then spread against it and kicked to propel her into an arc over any remaining obstacles. An upwelling of frigid waters- rendered null by magnificent dragonhide -beckoned her into a wedge that had cut into the earth, a canyon wide as her wingspan. Tail swaying behind her in articulate sinusoid strokes, she fell into the black-blue world of the deep sea, finally chancing a look back at her pursuer. She thought she saw him: huge, blocky, fast. Squealing behind closed jaws, she stuck out her arms and legs and paddled to a proper orientation for rocketing down the canyon, then folded her limbs in and leaped to it.
Q'sis was helping her, but not overtaking her. In fact they were as close as they had ever been to the other way around, he fascinated by what he saw through her eyes, and by the false threat of Poseith. Behind him, in the shadows, he thought, even though he was dashing down the bright surface of the water and if F'ton remained behind, it was only because he'd fulfilled Q'sis' expectation of being a useless wherryspawn. Unath's snout drove into a cloud of vegetative webbing that luminesced as it snapped apart, the light following each branching filament to its base like a lightning strike. This in turn released schools of palm-sized fish that flashed electric blue and nibbled in fruitless vengeance against the departing tan's tail, then trained toward the next rush in the water like pointless arrows. Those unwise enough to throw themselves against the charging dragonweight bounced off with glowing seeps flowering from their doral spines.
An unwitting, balloon-like red organism with a trio of downhanging tentacles slowly tipped its plate-sized eyes toward the approaching glimmer of happy green. Unath yawned open her jaws and snapped it down whole, then slashed out the end of the canyon and directly up for the surface. There was plenty of water between here and there, and as she slid up it began to brighten, then fill with odd shapes of refracted sunlight. The surface appeared, a forest of white trapezoids and diamonds joined so unnaturally that they persistently collapsed and reformed. Q'sis' hand struck the grain of the sandbar with such force that he immediately curled it against his chest in surprise. The light diminished in Unath's eyes, and the tan abruptly whipped around to face her pursuer, jaws parting in blank, soundless greeting. She had stalled all momentum quite quick enough to earn a collision as powerful as that of her man's hand with the spit of earth.
The tanrider laughed. A couple wherries paddling by in the surf regarded his boastful mirth with yellow-eyed suspicion as he dragged himself to the top of the 'bar and enthroned himself there. Q'sis leaned back on his palms, biting his lower lip as he smirked out at the long face of the ocean. At last, pushing dark, watery hair out of his face, he tilted his head toward F'ton. The ironrider had already been there when Q'sis emerged from the sea in such good humor, and now the larger, stronger man regarded him with half-lidded satisfaction. He scraped his injured hand under his nose, pausing in putting it down to glance at the blood on the knuckles. Then he hailed the ironrider with it, and resumed his lounge.
"Let the green be a woman," he proclaimed, then his green eyes opened with a little more interest as he considered his victorious rival. "You'll help me get L'kie to play cards then. You like Tillek?" He gestured to F'ton, as if the ironrider might not know who he was referring to otherwise. "Where are you from?"
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