…
“Pip-Pip!”
A huge, furry arm snaffled her up.
She hooted back in Ape-language, “Hunagu mighty-jungle-hunter. Good-good? Ready fly?”
“Ready get mate.” He thumped his barrel chest with a fist easily larger than Pip’s torso. “Ready go home. Pip go home? Stay home?”
That Pygmy spear of truth pierced her sorely. Hunagu had lost none of his ability to see straight to the heart of a matter. Never think Oraial Apes were simple, she admonished herself. Never think that simple speech equated to a simple mind, or a deficiency of heart. The Ape cradled her in his arms just as he used to cradle a Pygmy child to shelter her from his mother-Ape’s madness. There had been love in her Pygmy village, she remembered. But Hunagu, an animal to most people, had been the first to teach her a deeper kind of love, a love rooted in loyalty and sacrifice, a love which had saved many of her friends’ lives during an attack on their dormitory.
Would she see the dormitory again? This Academy?
“Hunagu go to jungle, take mate, have big-big family. Be happy-happy,” she said.
“Huh,” he snorted. “Pip family stinky no-good Dragons?”
She chuckled merrily. Kassik would transport him in a net which had been reinforced with metal cables. She pointed, “That Dragon. Silver.”
“Huh. Pip pretty. Dragon ugly pig-face pile of bat droppings …” He descended into unintelligible grumbling.
“Mount up!” bellowed Kassik. “We’ve a Marshal to kick in the teeth!”
Emblazon, Tazzaral and Emmaraz saluted these words with massive battle-challenges. Even Silver joined in the roaring, Pip noticed, until draconic thunder shook the nearby window-shutters. So much for anyone still trying to sleep.
Immediately, Faranion, Jerrion and Barrion scaled ropes dangling from Emblazon’s harness. Maylin yelped as Nak pinched her behind. “Move this rondure, o Empress of the East,” he smirked. Oyda promptly hauled Nak off by his left ear, snapping, “Get on your Dragon before Emblazon mistakes you for a stringy piece of goat-meat, Dragon Rider.” Durithion and Kaiatha buckled into their saddle harnesses onto Jyoss and Tazzaral respectively. Casitha balanced upon Chymasion’s shoulder, checking Arosia’s saddle and harness with expert hands, before running along his flank and leaping gleefully into Kassik’s upraised paw. She was so excited; Kassik could not help but bare his fangs in a Dragonish grin.
Pip bowed to Silver. “May I request a paw up, noble Silver?”
“At once, o startlingly formal Rider,” he replied. “How fare the wounds?”
“I’m in constant pain,” she admitted, stepping off his paw onto his muscular upper shoulder. The flight muscles were the bulkiest muscles of a Dragon’s physique, as hard as iron when taut yet as resilient as the finest, most flexible of blades. “Mistress Mya’adara supplied her usual range of oh-so-tasty herbal remedies. The first gave me the itches and the second had me seeing hallucinations in corners. So we’re trying a third concoction. At least Shimmerith has promised to help.”
As she settled into her saddle, a moulded leather pad stuffed with the finest duck-down from Archion Island, Silver stretched his wings along with the other Dragons, pumping his muscles to stimulate the circulation and warm up his joints and ligaments. Silver was not large, so he wore a fledgling’s saddle harness, fastened by ratchet straps to the spine-spikes ahead of and behind her position above his shoulders, between what would be a Human’s shoulder blades. The saddle was further anchored by a double girth strap, wire-reinforced, and an innovative armpit harness developed by Hardak, Maylin’s wheelchair-bound boyfriend. Those flexible straps fastened beneath the Dragon’s forelegs and ran up the front of his shoulders to the saddle, and were further buckled together in the middle beneath his chest and ran down to the girth-straps, making this arrangement the securest Dragon
“Pip-Pip!”
A huge, furry arm snaffled her up.
She hooted back in Ape-language, “Hunagu mighty-jungle-hunter. Good-good? Ready fly?”
“Ready get mate.” He thumped his barrel chest with a fist easily larger than Pip’s torso. “Ready go home. Pip go home? Stay home?”
That Pygmy spear of truth pierced her sorely. Hunagu had lost none of his ability to see straight to the heart of a matter. Never think Oraial Apes were simple, she admonished herself. Never think that simple speech equated to a simple mind, or a deficiency of heart. The Ape cradled her in his arms just as he used to cradle a Pygmy child to shelter her from his mother-Ape’s madness. There had been love in her Pygmy village, she remembered. But Hunagu, an animal to most people, had been the first to teach her a deeper kind of love, a love rooted in loyalty and sacrifice, a love which had saved many of her friends’ lives during an attack on their dormitory.
Would she see the dormitory again? This Academy?
“Hunagu go to jungle, take mate, have big-big family. Be happy-happy,” she said.
“Huh,” he snorted. “Pip family stinky no-good Dragons?”
She chuckled merrily. Kassik would transport him in a net which had been reinforced with metal cables. She pointed, “That Dragon. Silver.”
“Huh. Pip pretty. Dragon ugly pig-face pile of bat droppings …” He descended into unintelligible grumbling.
“Mount up!” bellowed Kassik. “We’ve a Marshal to kick in the teeth!”
Emblazon, Tazzaral and Emmaraz saluted these words with massive battle-challenges. Even Silver joined in the roaring, Pip noticed, until draconic thunder shook the nearby window-shutters. So much for anyone still trying to sleep.
Immediately, Faranion, Jerrion and Barrion scaled ropes dangling from Emblazon’s harness. Maylin yelped as Nak pinched her behind. “Move this rondure, o Empress of the East,” he smirked. Oyda promptly hauled Nak off by his left ear, snapping, “Get on your Dragon before Emblazon mistakes you for a stringy piece of goat-meat, Dragon Rider.” Durithion and Kaiatha buckled into their saddle harnesses onto Jyoss and Tazzaral respectively. Casitha balanced upon Chymasion’s shoulder, checking Arosia’s saddle and harness with expert hands, before running along his flank and leaping gleefully into Kassik’s upraised paw. She was so excited; Kassik could not help but bare his fangs in a Dragonish grin.
Pip bowed to Silver. “May I request a paw up, noble Silver?”
“At once, o startlingly formal Rider,” he replied. “How fare the wounds?”
“I’m in constant pain,” she admitted, stepping off his paw onto his muscular upper shoulder. The flight muscles were the bulkiest muscles of a Dragon’s physique, as hard as iron when taut yet as resilient as the finest, most flexible of blades. “Mistress Mya’adara supplied her usual range of oh-so-tasty herbal remedies. The first gave me the itches and the second had me seeing hallucinations in corners. So we’re trying a third concoction. At least Shimmerith has promised to help.”
As she settled into her saddle, a moulded leather pad stuffed with the finest duck-down from Archion Island, Silver stretched his wings along with the other Dragons, pumping his muscles to stimulate the circulation and warm up his joints and ligaments. Silver was not large, so he wore a fledgling’s saddle harness, fastened by ratchet straps to the spine-spikes ahead of and behind her position above his shoulders, between what would be a Human’s shoulder blades. The saddle was further anchored by a double girth strap, wire-reinforced, and an innovative armpit harness developed by Hardak, Maylin’s wheelchair-bound boyfriend. Those flexible straps fastened beneath the Dragon’s forelegs and ran up the front of his shoulders to the saddle, and were further buckled together in the middle beneath his chest and ran down to the girth-straps, making this arrangement the securest Dragon
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