"You wait out here with him," Ketvia insisted. "You can keep him calmer and happier than I can."

"But you don't know him like I do," Chiya protested. "What if you say the wrong thing? What if she refuses immediately?"

"She won't," Ketvia assured her. "Aloia's one of the nicest, most motherly people on Avengaea. You stay out here with him, I'll go inside and talk to her. You can bring him in whenever she's ready to meet him."

The trio, two dragons and one half-demon trapped in a tall human's body, stood in the hallway outside the bonding office just beyond the dome of Sanctuary. Chiya was fretful and anxious, Ketvia just impatient to get this over with, and Cacopheny seemed only bewildered, staring around him at the gently lit hallway and the intricate carved designs on the walls and ceiling. He utterly ignored the fact that he was being talked about, probably used to it, as the two of them seemed to have done enough talking about him since they had picked him up as a ward weeks ago. He had been surprisingly docile and quiet ever since he had recovered from whatever Yihoto had done to him the day before, at least not leaping out to slash or snarl at anyone, but he hadn't really left the darkened room they'd given him for his stay here until he could be moved into the candidate rooms. If he even was going to be.

"If you're sure," Chiya finally acceded, though not without misgivings.

"I'm sure," Ketvia assured her, then knocked heartily on the office door.

The door creaked open after a moment, and there she was, golden hair pulled back and dressed in common clothes. The pleasant smile that never seemed to leave her face welcomed them from below eyes that betrayed curiosity at the strange trio before her. "Hello, there." When the half-dragon, the lady Aloia, gave them a cursory scan, however, that smile faltered for a second and she raised her eyebrows high, glancing around Ketvia to the tall, shadowed figure behind. "Who are you?" she finally asked, no less pleasantly, but with obviously piqued curiosity.

"Ketvia Pariyani," Ketvia said quickly, bobbing her head respectfully. "We've met once or twice, I think, but weren't really introduced. I was on Tris'Hath for that whole rotten war thing until a couple weeks ago. So was my friend, Chiya Diemicana." She nodded to Chiya, who bobbed in a quadraped's curtsey. Cacopheny peered around them, but their massive dragonic forms mostly hid him and hid Aloia from his own view, so that most of what he could see was an impression of gold.

Aloia's golden eyes flicked into the shadows behind the dragons briefly, then they darted back to back to Ketvia, and she nodded. "You'll have to forgive me if I don't recall. It's been a very busy few weeks." Her smile was at once apologetic and amused. "Do come in, though, if you don't mind changing to human form. Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry," Ketvia blinked, and suddenly she was no longer a twenty-one foot dragoness, but instead a six foot human woman with burnished skin and fiery hair. "Yeah, there's something I'd like to talk to you about. I'll come in, you can sit down an stuff. I'll get you in a minute, Chiya," she promised, patting the Light dragoness' elbow, about the highest she could reach.

Aloia ducked back into her office then, gesturing Ketvia to follow. The Fire looked around curiously, finding that the office looked more like a living room than an place of business. A discrete desk at one end of the room boasted a crystal data-storage orb, neat stacks of paper, and a voicepad, among other small items. More prominent were the armchairs to the nearer side of the room, to which Aloia went. All in all, it was far different from most officials' workrooms, certainly from those Ketvia had seen. It seemed Aloia was used to visitors of a less than professional kind.

"Come, sit," the half-dragon suggested. Ketvia dropped gracelessly into her own, well aware she looked like a ruffian next to Aloia's gentility, and simply not caring. "So, Ketvia," Aloia continued, "what brings you to me today?"

Taking a breath, Ketvia went straight to it. "Cacopheny. That's his name, that half-demon out there. He's why I'm here-- well, actually, Chiya's why I'm here, but she wants to do this, so. Here I am, to ask you to take a psychotic half-demon into your bonding program as a candidate." She grinned, half-expecting an out-right "you're crazy" comment.

Aloia's golden brows shot up again, and Ketvia could just see the energies of her mind working as she tried to formulate a response, choosing her words carefully. "Well... Cacopheny. That's an odd name." She smiled briefly, and Ketvia answered with a grin of agreement. "I see," she finally said. "Does the young man himself want to bond a dragonet? Demons as a rule don't like our sort, and half-demons... well." Her recovering smile was almost ironic, apologetic. "Not even to speak of what the Sanctuary officials are going to think of an unknown half-demon in their midst."

"He likes dragon kids well enough," Ketvia said with a shrug of broad shoulders. "Made a pretty good friend of one back with a bunch of Airs-- you might know her, she got entered as a bondee just yesterday, Enyi Credensin? And he sure likes Chiya, and seems to trust me, too, for the most part. So that's something. As for the officials... well, I know they won't like it. That's why I came to you, first, in the hopes that we might at least get one official on our side. His side. Whatever."

Aloia's smile turned soft. "Yes, I will certainly try, if you think he'd be a good candidate. I know how much grief a half-demon can get, trying to do anything around here. I'll put in a good word for him, and see if I can pull some strings." Her eyes went wide then, earnest. "I should like to meet him, though. He's the only demon half-breed I've heard of for-- oh, two hundred years now."

"That's why we brought him," Ketvia admitted. "Well, that and Chiya doesn't like to leave him alone for too long." She rose to head for the door, then gave Aloia a bit of a grin. If the lady had any illusions about what demons did, and what her possible new charge had been through, now was the time to shatter them: "And yeah, you don't find too many demon half-breeds-- demons like how they taste too much. This one only survived because he was being used for a sex toy, basically. Hence why he's so screwed up. Well, one of the biggest reasons, anyway."

And with that, leaving Aloia to wince lightly at the thought, Ketvia padded back to the door to open it up. "Chiya, Cacopheny, you wanna come in an meet the lady Aloia?" Aloia stood, a new sympathy in her eyes, to greet Chiya and Cacopheny as they entered, while Ketvia held the door. Chiya came in first, shrinking down to a petite, shimmery young woman, leading the tall, boney, darkly dressed Cacopheny into the room by the long-fingered, clawed-tipped hand. Shaggy black hair, cleaned and combed at long last, partially hid his face, and light fell oddly across it, making his expression hard to read and his eyes all but impossible to see. Even so, he was staring fixedly at Aloia. Chiya led him in and saw him seated in the chair Ketvia had so recently vacated, standing behind him with one hand protectively, or maybe just nervously, on his sharp-boned shoulder.

"This is Aloia," Ketvia said, somewhat needlessly, from by the door as she shut it again. "Aloia, meet Chiya again, and Cacopheny. We, uh, don't know his last name. Neither does he, it seems, since Cacopheny's all he told us." The half-demon shot her a sullen look, presumably for talking about him as if he wasn't there, but didn't say anything.

Aloia nodded to Chiya first, giving the Light girl an empathetic smile. Declining to take the other seat, she took a careful step towards the sitting halfbreed and gave him a gracious nod, reassuring warmth in her every move. "Just Cacopheny, then. Welcome to Sanctuary."

The half-demon eyed her a long, tense moment before the odd shadows about his face lifted, giving her her first few of his angular face and dead black eyes. "Ssssank yoo," he said, his voice heavily accented, low and harsh, but understandable.

"He only just learned common a couple weeks ago," Ketvia explained. "Seems demon-speech is pretty different, and he's had a hard time adjusting. Chiya can translate pretty well, if you need it."

Again Cacopheny gave the Fire dragoness a dark look, turning in his seat to glower at her. "Ketvia," Chiya said softly, "it's okay. Stop apologizing for him." Ketvia flushed, more with annoyance than embarrassment, but kept her mouth shut.

"Yes, that's fine. I've gotten fairly good at understanding accents in all my years." The half-dragon brushed off Ketvia's apology with a smile, but her eyes and attention went quickly back to Cacopheny, and as she studied his sharp face, she spoke directly to him, never mind that he was busy glaring at Ketvia. "You certainly aren't the worst I have heard by a long shot, my friend. So, you want to bond a dragonet, do you?"

Cacopheny's attention jerked back to Aloia at her last words. His mouth opened, then closed, then he asked tentatively, "Vat?"

Ketvia groaned, and Chiya hurried to explain, "We hadn't... asked him yet. We didn't want to tell him something that wouldn't happen, you see.... Cacopheny, Yihoto sent us here because of your voices. Remember, he said he wouldn't make them go away, but he wanted us to do something else? This is it, that something else."

"But... vat. Issss. Eet?" Cacopheny asked slowly and carefully, most likely because he wanted to be understood, but a slight cant of the words hinted at the insanity that so far hadn't been obvious.

"It's... oh, Lady Aloia, you'd know better than me... can you explain?" Chiya looked hopefully at the bonding mistress.

Aloia's smile once again slipped into surprise, and she stared at Chiya outright briefly, for what, she could guess-- for not telling Cacopheny about their intentions. The dragoness shrank in on herself with embarrassed shame under the half-dragon's incredulous gaze, before Aloia recovering herself. There was still a long pause before Aloia spoke again. "Oh dear... I see," she finally said. "I'll try to explain, then." Looking to Cacopheny, she took a deep breath. "The bonding is the formation of a life-long mental connection between a young dragon and, well, another being. The two bonded would share things like thoughts and feelings. I've heard it described like the constant company of a close friend, regardless of distance. Most who have bonded like it very much, in fact."

Cacopheny watched her closely, with a frown of concentration that deepened as he began to understand what they were all talking about-- Chiya, Ketvia, Aedelian, Yihoto, and now Aloia. There was a long moment of silence, and then, still frowning, he finally repeated, "Reef-rong-- Leef-long mehntul b-bond? Sssen... vood sssey hear my zhahdohwsss?"

"His voices," Chiya murmured. "He hears them in shadows, the same way his magic works."

After another brief glance to Chiya, surprise and something else in her eyes as she finally understood the depth Cacopheny's problems, Aloia still managed to answered, despite the subject matter, "Yes, if a dragonet bonded you, he or she would probably be able to hear the same things you do."

There was another long pause as he thought, obviously hard. His eyes flicked to the floor behind Aloia, then back to her face, then to the side, as if he didn't want to look at any of them. "Ssssey vood not leek sssat," he stated at last. "Sssey vood... rrrregretuh. Me. Sssse b-bond. Eef ssssey heard sssem. I sssink."

"Not necessarily," Chiya interrupted hopefully. "They might be able to help, make it so you don't hear them as often. And you could warn whoever might want to bond with you, too, so they'd know. Right?" She looked back to Aloia. "They get to meet the dragonets first, several times, don't they?"

"Yes, yes they do," affirmed the golden woman firmly. "All three days before the bonding itself the candidates get to meet with the dragonets, get to know them and such. And I think...." She paused to consider, chewing on her words and regarding Chiya levelly. "I think that maybe, yes, the stability of another mind could help with those kinds of voices. That's an application I hadn't thought of before." Then she smiled, at both the protective White dragoness and the unsure hybrid. "Yes, I think it could help. Do you want to try it, Cacopheny?"

The half-demon's gaze flicked back down again-- to Aloia's shadow, Chiya realized-- then he took a moment to glare across the room in thought. "I... too not know... yess-noh, but vood b-bee... nisse, maybe." The black eyes fixed back on Aloia herself. "Too yoo sssink yess, sssen?"

The dragon-woman's eyes were locked on Cacopheny's face, and as he spoke her smile widened a fraction more. "It's up to you, dear. You don't have to decide right away, unless you want to get into the bonding a few days from now. If you do, I'll try my best to get you accepted."

"I don't know about him," Ketvia spoke up, "but we can't keep toting him around with us for another six months... so unless you have something else we can do with him, it'll have to be this time."

"Ketvia!" Chiya hissed, very nearly scandalized by her friend's rudeness. Ketvia held up her hands as if to say, "only the truth, sorry!" and the Light sighed. "She is right, though...." Cacopheny glanced to her, as if this were the first he'd heard of it, too, and she shrank a little. "Nothing I'm doing is helping you," she said, trying to explain. "And you're not in any shape to go follow us back to Tris'Hath... there's a war going on there, we only came back for a few weeks."

"Oh," the half-demon murmured, brows coming down again. "Sssen... maybe I zhoold trrry. If sssey too not leek me, sssen I vill know."

As attention came back to her, Aloia drew herself up again, and Chiya could only imagine what she must have thought. None of her imaginings were good. "I'll do my best to get you in, then," Aloia was saying. "You can stay in the candidate dormitories if you need somewhere, in the meantime." She smiled. "I'm sure no one will mind if I put you there a bit preemptively."

"He's staying with us," Chiya said hurriedly, trying to justify herself somehow, trying to assuage the vague suspicion that Aloia didn't approve. "I don't know... would you be all right here, Cacopheny? Without me, in a room here?" When he hesitated, she continued, trying to drown her fears with words, "There will be a lot of dragons, mostly young ones, nearby, but you don't have to talk to them before the meetings if you don't want to."

"And it isn't like there aren't dragons all over the place in the rest of the city," Ketvia added wryly. "Come on, Chiya, he's a big boy, he can survive without you during the night."

Flushing under the iridescence of her cheeks, Chiya looked down. "Whatever you like, Cacopheny...."

Looking between the two dragons, Cacopheny finally answered, reluctantly, obviously not wanting to upset Chiya but still as if he wanted to, "I vill. Sssstay heeer. Ket ussss't too t-t-drahgonsss I mussst, yesss?"

"Alright, wonderful," Aloia replied. "Whenever you're ready, myself or anyone else here can show you to an empty candidate room."

Struggling to try and be the "big boy" Ketvia said he was, Cacopheny rose carefully, as if afraid he might break, or more likely trying to control his usual ticks and twitches and appear as normal as possible. It even mostly worked: he got all the way up from the chair before he looked abruptly to one side, eyes going sharp, as if he saw something there. Before Chiya could do more than start and think about trying to distract him, he seemed to recover, his shoulders twitching lightly and eyes dulling, and he looked back at Aloia as he straightened up the rest of the way. "Sssssiss issss all I have."

"So far," Chiya added nervously, afraid Aloia would disapprove of him only having one set of clothes, as well-- other than the one he'd already ruined by punching holes in it, that is. "We haven't had much time to get a wardrobe," she explained.

"Yess," Cacopheny agreed, nodding rapidly. "Sssso ver eess ssssee room? Aloia-lady."

"Lady Aloia," Ketvia corrected.

"Yesss," Cacopeny agreed again.

"That's all right," Aloia told them lightly, having watched Cacopheny with a kind of sympathetic interest at made Chiya a little more hopeful, then turned for the door, beckoning them along. "This way, then. Chiya, Ketvia, you are certainly invited along. It's better you know where he is if you need to get ahold of him."

"I promised we'd see the cathedrals," Chiya said softly, keeping her eyes mostly down. "So I'll at least need to know where... that is, if you still want to?"

Cacopheny blinked at her. "Yesss," he said again. "Sssssey sssssount be-be-be-- p-pretty." He gave up on "beautiful". Chiya smiled a bit, a little reassured that she hadn't done something horribly wrong, and Ketvia opened the door for them all. She gave Chiya's hair a tousle as she passed, surprising a laugh out of her. Grateful for the attempt to keep her cheerful, at least, Chiya smiled at her friend and continued outside. Cacopheny, ducking his head and slouching again now that he was on his feet, as if he simply felt too tall, or his head felt too heavy, followed Aloia out, and Ketvia closed the door again behind them.

Smiling as enigmatically and gently as always, Aloia beckoned them on. The dorm rooms were off the main meeting rooms, just up the hallway from Aloia's own office and she pointed the different parts of the complex as they passed. The circular meeting area, the door to the kitchens, the classrooms where the bonded would learn all they needed to know... and then the dorms. There she paused, considering, but led them on past some doors that were ajar or had lights streaming from beneath them. Finally, at the second last door to the left, she stopped. "Here we are. You're lucky, Cacopheny; you get a room all to yourself." She offered the slouched young man a smile once again. "All the others so far have to share. The door locks from the inside and the bathroom is through the door at the back; meals are taken in the kitchen, and other than that, you're allowed to wander wherever you want within Sanctuary unless someone tells you not to."

"Meelss," Cacopheny echoed, as if the word mystified him. Chiya paused, hesitant to say what she felt, but Ketvia was more practical and less concerned with irritating or upsetting or even embarrassing.

"He's never eaten with anyone else before," she said simply. "In fact, he hasn't done much of anything with anyone else before, except us and his friend Enyi. We haven't had much time to teach him manners or social niceties. If it could be arranged that he'd get his meals in his room, that might be best for all around. Especially if you have dragon cooks, and all. --Don't look at me like that, Cacopheny. Remember the last time you spent more than a minute or two with a large group?" The half-breed actually emitted a low growl, glaring at Ketvia, but the Fire dragoness did not seem phased a bit.

Nor did she seem inclined to explain to Aloia, unless Aloia wanted to ask-- and Aloia herself seemed to have decided it was safer not to ask. She merely raised her eyebrows and quietly speculated while nodding an affirmative. "I'll see what I can do."

"Wise of you," Ketvia said, giving Cacopheny a sweet smile, which he returned by a show of fangs-- his first show of fangs, actually, since meeting Aloia. Chiya held her breath, but Aloia's smile barely flickered. "Oh, get over yourself, boy," Ketvia snorted. "Go check out your new room, why don't you? It's a lot nicer than the one you had back at Aedelian's, or with the demons." That seemed to distract him well enough, for the snarl faded into a surprisingly meek expression, and he skittered into the room.

"Well, then." Aloia looked away from Cacopheny, her hands pressed together, and suggested softly, "Shall we leave him to explore his new quarters?"

"Might be a good idea," Ketvia agreed, equally quietly, not wanting to attract Cacopheny's attention again. Chiya watched him prowl around the room like a dog inspecting its cage, eyes hooded and the shadows darkening around him as if, now that he was not trying to seem "normal", everything strange about him was coming back full-force.

"I guess so," Chiya finally said. "He won't think about us for a while, probably...." And she turned away at last to follow Aloia down the hallway. Even though Ketvia slung her arm around her shoulders, grinning and promising that he'd be fine, she still felt as if she were abandoning him, and she could only hope that Aloia wouldn't think the same.