Whispers [Tan Wenth's 2nd Flight!]

[kireon]

OOC: This Flight is kind of really sorta different in that Wenth has only addressed/called one dragon. If you want yours to notice and follow anyway, go for it, but she has her intended winner chosen already. =)

It was the change of season, Aylina told herself. The change of season made that hide look different, look glossier, glowier- and that last one wasn't even a word but she did not care because she was looking at a glowing subqueen and everyone with even a tunnelsnake's intellect knew what that meant in layman's terms.

She wasn't sure if she should rejoice, cry, or laugh hysterically and hope that nothing went the way it did on Wenth's maiden flight. It was way too soon. Even three turns from now would have been too soon- not that there had been anything wrong with her baby's flight, of course not, it'd been good, and lovely, and full of all kinds of emotions she hadn't quite managed to put names to as of yet, but it was just...

She wasn't ready to be a sorta-mama to dragon babies again.

Wenth's eyes opened slowly, blinking in the dim light of the cavern she'd wanted to rest in for the day. Aylina's frantic thoughts were well founded, given the large number of eggs she'd managed last time, but the tan somehow knew otherwise this time. But there were other voices there, calling to her on a distant level, one that was far beyond what her body was telling her- and that was a voice older than time itself.

Those voices needed following, she decided after a long time of listening to faint whispers, of barely-there nothingness that wasn't nothing. Yes... she needed to go now. Her eyes slid shut again as she slowly hoisted herself to her feet with a lurch and shift of hide against stone.

Aylina's face was clear, and she opened her eyes again once up, stretching her neck and head to nearly scrape against the stone floor. It was hard to put herself on Aylina's eye level, her pretty cloud. She hummed softly, distractedly, and tapped the tip of her snout against her lanky rider's chest the way she'd done ever since she was a mere dragonet. It will be okay, Pretty, yes... it will. Not this time, no...[/i] She assured her, this one was just... something else.

She didn't know what, just that it was.

Her mind brushed against Aylina's own, comforting as well as seeking comfort, searching through the woman's mind in the old, familiar ways until she found what she needed. She crooned once more at the touch of her rider's calloused palms and slid away, a pale, glowing stone mass as she exited and puffed a long, cloudy breath into the chilly air. I like this season, yes... I do... I can make my own clouds...[/i] She shared, privately, with Aylina in childish delight.

There would be time for clouds much later, right now, there were other matters to tend to. She shook herself and launched into the air, choosing to pass the herdpens by completely in favor of the crisp, late autumn air. She would not need blood or flesh for this. Her faceted eyes blinked, second lid sliding shut to give protection against the wind as her powerful wings sought the wind, tested and found it adequete. There were voices calling, none of them familiar, and yet...

One dragon's mind was touched, a promise made and kept safe for her by her rider until the time was right for her to take it back. I did not forget, no, I did not... Halventh, this time you are my only star...[/i]

Aylina gawked from the entrance at the paused form of dragon in the air. Had... any dragon just chosen to throw out tradition of a chase in favor of just calling one? ...maybe Kalith? Had that happened? Or had she had put Daidoroth through the Chase as well, just to ensure he was still the dragon she had thought him to be?

Her head hurt, and she giggled softly to herself as she shook her head, knowing Wenth had... something under control, though this whole business of faint whisperings was just... she had no idea what it was all about. And with her senses so closely linked, those whisperings were there with her as well.

It was like coming across a conversation that you were barely too far away to hear. Occasionally able to make out what might have been part of a word, but not enough to be absolutely sure which word. You sound drunk, Aylina. She thought to herself, wryly, and shook her head again, attempting to put those bothersome voices away.

Didn't work, but she could at least pretend.

Wenth waited.

She was always, always patient where her favorite blue was concerned. She kept herself in the air, though occasionally her head turned in the direction of the voices only she and Aylina heard, or so she thought. This way, Halventh, this way...[/i]

There was never a point she could ever, ever forget her star, and she would prove it... somehow, yes, somehow...

[Azhdarchid]

Halventh reared up on his ledge, only one forepaw still on the ground, throat weaving the air into a low growl. The paw still in contact with the stone pawed at it, talons inking new white gouges across the battered surface.

Time to go.

L'xon responded, moving out of his own dreary life and into the parched light of the late autumn afternoon. Halventh's back stood bare, but he ascended it without concern. Their eyes did not miss the absence of fair of contenders. But it was the L'xon part that wondered:

Just me?

The dragon snuck through the precursor motion of flying just high enough to deposit his man on Aylina's ledge, turning around in a spiral of wind and breathy mist. His tail swung over his rider's head, ruffling L'xon's hair before he jumped his one hitched foot back off the Weyr wall. Humans might traipse around in the dirt, but a dragon need not ever touch ground if he did not want to. That he did was just geniality.

He did not work his path through the air the clumsy way a fish swam through the sea: he bent the sky to his liking, one wingbeat at a time.

This way...

He got up under her, tilting on his narrow wings to climb past her, turning lengthwise for a victory lap around his peculiar clutchmate. The blue came down belly-first in front of her, turning up into a hover to splash his brawny speckled underside across her field of view. His chest still heaved with a hatchling-like intensity, racing in one place. The blue's eyes murked between the red of the hunt and their native neutrality, iridescence glossing over the facets. Three sharp beats tucked him just a little higher than the tan, then as he fell past her he thrust the length of his neck up against her, pressing the warmth on and under his skin against her before he receded another beat.

Where are we going...? he asked, already offering up the wilted barrier of his mentality to her. Flights altered the dynamic of the hive, elements became individuals, both trying to stamp the memory of themselves on the other. It was childish, a brief dream, and forgotten no matter the aspirations of the participants. The rarity came when two dragons bothered to hold interest outside of their heat. Then the Flight was just an exclamation point, and the story went on beyond it.

But Halventh was a momentary creature. As he touched Wenth now, as he burnished his powdery hide up to a vibrance that matched hers now, he found things that prompted his curiosity. Voices. It was only because it was Wenth he could think about them in the first place, that he did not just follow and melt, ebb and flow, still Halventh and not just a force of nature. And what Halventh wanted to know was Where...?

Humans. Weak, incapable of even the most rudimentary connection, save where genetics occasionally worked out an oddity. Avatars for the dance- though in Halventh and Wenth's case it might have been more a prolonged snuggle -but still a little bit themselves. The dragon decided, the rider chose to comply.

"It's like I can almost hear you."

L'xon stood before Aylina as Halventh did before Wenth, with one change: the rider had already embraced his counterpart. His arms rested over hers, hands nestled at opposing wings of her back. His face rested beside hers, eyes searching down the structure of her shoulders. His chin almost rested on one of them: he had always been a handful of inches shorter than the tanrider. But he felt like the strong one, almost always, since that first Chase and that request that he not go, even though Wenth had chosen otherwise.

And just in case she did not believe it was him, if the details had been lost in the current theatrics, he had just opened his mouth and given characteristically poor description to the alien proximity of their dragons. "I can hear your heart," he amended. "It's fast." He pulled his face back to enact the poor human substitute for draconic soul-searching: he met her eyes. His had the warmth of his blue in them, though it took a moment for him to remember to smile. The months-old scars on his right cheek coursed just short of cutting off his ability to do so. They were still standing in the shadows of their dragons, and the webs of dark and light rained back and forth over them as great wings rewrote the sky above.