The Magic of Touching {Lyna's Touching}

A shadow grew over Lyna like a creeping mountain, then the rider stepped alongside her. A plate of fixings fit for a dragon balanced on his arms, so piping fresh from the kitchens that the tips of his fingers had turned red. He eyed Lyna's white skin and modest height.

"Seems girls are all that creature Jasmine has for me," he muttered. "Girls, girls." Q'sis wore a fine dark blue tunic that shimmered over his broad shoulders, but where the sun touched his black hair it shrank away without reflection, and his skin was dark, scarred and dull beneath his fineries. "We'll take breakfast. At the top of the stairs are leather blankets. Pick them up and follow me."

The natural stair to the Hatching cavern rose to a pinnacle, where it permeated the Stands, then sunk again to the hot, sandy pit. Unath and Mith were positioned appropriately around the eggs, though that was no act of their own. Unath had rolled onto her back and flipped her wings out across the open expanse of sand where there were no eggs. Each twitch of her dusky pinions, the underwebs lined in cream, flung entire dunes into the air like so many gold pieces. She stopped when she noticed the two silhouettes coming in, and mushed her upside-down head further into the sand as she strained to see them. A blurted, rumbling croon served as a greeting. Q'sis raised his hand, balancing the entire tray on the other palm for a moment.

The dragon grunted, then resumed rolling, albeit with less dangerous enthusiasm. Q'sis stopped closer to Mith, right in with the clutch, and motioned for Lyna to lay down the squares of wherhide. A tall black egg crossed with white filigrees fell over on its side when the girl approached. The air rippled with idle squelches and scritches from the eggs, though there were none of the consistent tremors that would herald the Hatching proper.

"Not sir," Q'sis snapped. "M'lord. My lord. Where are all you brats getting 'sir' as a term for dragonriders?" He jabbed his finger at the blankets. "Sit, scorch you." He laid down the tray at the joining of the leathers and settled on one himself. A couple close eggs, blue and bright pink, were dragged over for Lyna's benefit. Or maybe Q'sis had been roasting in the Sands too long, and preferred the eggs as lunch company over giddy little girls that called him sir.

Much of the present irritation did not spring from Lyna, but he had a much cooler watch over her now than when he had been offering food. He unwrapped a baked wherry leg and stripped the meat from it in four bites, then licked his fingers clean, all in silence. He raised his eyebrows at Lyna. "Uncork that flask and pour me the wine."

The bright pink egg, as offensive as Agnith in its gaudy wrap, produced a weak scritch on the side closest to the girl, while its blue sibling remained silent as a gravestone. Q'sis took a deep breath, then forced himself to look at the Candidate without sneering at her. "Do you have a husband? You look ripe enough. What children do you wish for?" Casual again as a friend at snacks, Q'sis waved his broad hand at her. "Come. Tell me of yourself. And you may pet these two." His eyes narrowed. "Unless there is another you prefer instead."

"Never served a man wine before?" Q'sis inquired. "Not your father or brother." It was clear she had no husband even before she told him. He raised the back of his hand to the side of his nose in an obscure Holdless gesture, then dropped it to the glass. He almost didn't drink when she continued I am not exactly sure I want children, but rolled his eyes and allowed a sip when she elaborated: not ready. From what he could tell, Holdbred women did not understand family, which was why they could not take a baby whenever they liked and expect love and care still from their own. What prevented them from taking husbands for the purpose was probably a related mental malformity.

Spare him these girls and their not readys, he thought as he watched Lyna's hands encircle the restless pink. Unath had been ready the moment she'd matured, and so it should be with humans. The egg calmed under Lyna's touch, scratching fading to noiseless presses of parts through the amnion. Q'sis took it from the Candidate once she'd moved on to the blue egg, and rested the pink in his lap, tipped against his thigh. It did not stir at all in his care.

The blue egg pipped, almost as if in surprise, when Lyna's hand closed over it. Then it went silent and still, and did not move for her. "Maybe it's a boy, needing a lad's touch," Q'sis recommended. "Maybe it's a blue," he interpreted with a greater grin. After all, should a blue shy away from Lyna, that spoke well of her too. She might simply settle into some sort of existence like Delilah's- still pitiable, but not blasphemous. On the other hand, he'd had enough time in the past few days to watch eggs scritch and pip and wibble about the Sands, with or without Candidates prodding at them, to grasp that most of the motions were probably meaningless. Only nonsense came from babies, no matter their species. "You can get up and go look at whatever else is of interest," he allowed. "Dig out those." He pointed at the shells nearest Unath, several large eggs that had gotten buried in the tan's thrashing. Unath had stopped rolling and lay on her back, heaving as streams of gold ran off her belly. "Quick, light touches, or your hands will burn. Girl-touches."