When one had a routine, time seemed to slow down, blur together, and fix itself into an endless round of days. Another year passed for the household of five in the two-storied cottage at the edge of the woods with little to remark upon. Everything was quiet and as comfortable as things could get with five remarkably different people living in the same house together.

Perhaps the most obvious change in the household was very obvious, indeed. Kenjista, though she had nearly trebled in size over her first year bonded with the rest, finished her growing after nearly two years of life, and easily reached fourteen and a half feet. Her personality, however, hadn't much changed: she was still as self-centered, histrionic, and manipulative as ever. She and Akija still had spats, which Akija had once or twice had to actually escape into the smaller portions of the house to avoid an "accidental" swipe of claws. Chario and Sentio, though growing, were no match for her size, and had that much less control over her by being unable to physically overwhelm her. Still, there were times when Kenjista was as sweet and tractable as anyone could please... when she wanted something, anyway. The rest of the household, and those associated with it, simply tolerated her, because they had to.

The fiery bonded pair, Akija and Chario, only seemed to get closer and more alike as another year passed. He calmed her passions, and she goaded him into stretching himself. Akija paid next to no attention in school's morning classes, which she still attended with the expressed purpose of keeping her housemates company. Chario seemed to pay more attention to his classmates than schoolwork, though he still managed to pass all his tests. Though she still took magical lessons with her father, as much dueling for fun as practice now, Akija had graduated from merely helping Deiv enchant artifacts for him to distribute, to creating a few of them on her own for their own personal income. She was the only one contributing to the house's income at all, actually: they received a small portion of the Watcher clan funds, and a slightly larger stipend from the Canaric household, and with Akija's small contribution, they had enough.

Though still plagued by voices and prone to personality shifts, Cacopheny seemed content. He finally mastered reading, though his writing was still difficult to decipher, and had moved on to actually reading dragon histories. Professor Veshal, who had taken it as her responsibility from the beginning to be his personal tutor, was attempting to start him on basic mathematics, but he was slow to catch on and much preferred reading, which wasn't really saying much. He could walk under an open sky without hunching-- for the most part, anyway-- and didn't scare the other dragons at their bonding-group classes anymore. What was most encouraging, though, was that there had been no violent outbursts and no more dangerous situations since the attack on Fuego the previous summer. He seemed more relaxed than Sentio had ever seen him, and didn't even lock himself in his room more than twice a week, on average.

And Sentio was just glad to get back into a routine, at last, and focus on his studies rather than what emergencies there might be happening at home, or might be in the brewing, or had just been recovered from. He happily carted stacks of books around with him, put in extra hours of homework-- when his housemates didn't convince him otherwise, anyway-- and found a bit of spare time to work on putting as much of Cacopheny's demonic language onto paper as he could. He still got to visit his parents something like once a month, usually with the rest of the household in tow, and they still had dinner once a week with the Watcher parents, but on the whole, the little five-some was on its own. It was a very heady feeling for someone who had only recently turned twenty-seven, bonding speed-growth or no bonding speed-growth.

The one occasion of note, besides the occasional holidays and periods of stress during which a test was given or a paper was due, was in late spring when the dragons Chiya and Ketvia dropped by, as they had the spring before. On their way back out to war on Tris'Hath after their yearly "vacation" to all-female or completely uninhabited locations to avoid going into heat in the fall, they liked to stop by and see how their previous ward and his new "family" were doing. They were the closest things Cacopheny had to parents-- Rao and her nameless mate didn't count-- and the half-demon both looked forward to their arrivals, and felt highly uncomfortable with them around for more than a day or two. Sentio couldn't quite fathom why; he loved being able to see his parents, and with someone to look up to as parental figures, he imagined Cacopheny would be happy to see them. Instead, he was more twitchy than normal, despite doing his level best to try and seem as normal and well-adjusted as possible, which only resulted in him acting oddly strained.

Ketvia, to his surprise, understood completely, and even took the time to try and explain. It had something to do with Cacopheny's age-- she said he was something like thirty, which for someone who was half human, apparently put his maturity at closer to fifty, to a dragon-- and something to do with remembering how vulnerable he had been with the two of them and not wanting to remember or think about that, and something to do with their disruption of his everyday life. Sentio could only grasp the edges of that, and was prepared to shrug it off as just one more of Cacopheny's eccentricities when she added, with a roll of her eyes, that just like any other "child", he wanted to please his "parents", and that made him act funny. That, Sentio could understand, and he felt much more comfortable with Cacopheny's discomfort after that.

The other reason for those visits, that it was on their way back from their yearly "vacation", still brought a bit of a blush to Sentio's face, under his fur, though. That made Ketvia laugh even more than when Chiya blushed about it. Alder Canaric had given "where babies come from" tale before Sentio had bonded, as part of his preparation for such a big step in his life-- and Cacopheny had experienced it rather more vividly than most-- so it wasn't as if he was a total innocent about such things. He still didn't particularly want to think about it, though, and took refuge in the fact that he wasn't even into adolescence yet, so he didn't have to.

Worse, Cacopheny found his avoidance of the topic just as amusing, and even stooped to teasing him about it now and then. Being teased by a psychotic half-demon who actually had actually experienced... that... was not encouraging.

The worst, though, was yet to come.... There were only six months left of formal schooling for the bonded pairs from the first four bonding ceremonies-- pairs from the subsequent bondings, and Abeysta Felicita, their professor for biology and natural sciences, was going to be leaving them early. It seemed she'd simply run out of things to teach them, and another professor was going to be taking over, with a crash course in physical and chemical sciences in the last six months of class. However, that meant that Lady-Professor Felicita was going to be giving them the lessons she'd saved for last, until the gathered kits were old enough to appreciate them: reproduction and sexual education. She even seemed to give the Light dragons in the class a look of pure, wicked mischief when she began the lecture.

The whole lesson, Sentio had sunk as deeply as he could into his seat, ears burning with embarrassment. Lady-Professor Felicita had no shame, none at all, and actually spoke from experience, if she was to be believed. She even had pictures! He consoled himself with noticing that other dragons-- the little Light Tantra, in particular, but not just other Lights-- seemed to squirm as embarrassedly as he did. Neither Chario nor Akija seemed at all interested, and spent most of the lesson pointing out who was the most embarrassed or disgusted-looking of the other students. Kenjista-- they'd long ago moved to the back row to accommodate her much-increased size, since she seemed to like lording her size and so-called adulthood over the rest of the class and refused to stay behind-- was one of the disgusted ones, proving that her adulthood wasn't exactly complete, either.

Cacopheny, of course, didn't seem embarrassed, at all. In fact, for someone so... er... experienced... he paid an inordinate amount of attention, a small furrow between his brows as if he were confused about something. Just what he could be confused about, Sentio had no idea. It seemed pretty straight-forward to him. Embarrassing, yes, but still straight-forward.

When everyone filed out, some more quickly than others and Sentio's little family last, due to Kenjista being too big to get out with the rest of the class still inside, Cacopheny still looked puzzled. "Somethin' not settin' right?" Akija asked, patting him on the shoulder as they meandered out of the classroom.

"I jzust vonder," he replied with a little frown. "I never knew ssat sex made tchildren."

Chario laughed, while Sentio blushed all over again at not only the mention of... sex, but at the thought that his so-mature and so-experienced bond hadn't known that, of all things. Chario just found it amusing. "You're kidding. You didn't?"

"No...." Cacopheny still looked troubled, and Akija was never one to let an issue lie.

"Still gotta problem?" she asked.

Expression not changing a bit, he answered, "I jzust vonder... if I have any."

Sentio nearly swallowed his tongue in shock at that idea. Chario, though, looked like he wanted to laugh but didn't dare. "I doubt it, Cacoph'," he managed.

Akija took pity on him, seeming more serious about it than her bond, and explained: "Rao would've known where kids come from, and she wouldn't have wanted any. She woulda made sure she didn't have any, for you."

::Thank the gods,:: Kenjista snorted. ::I can just imagine how messed up any of his kids might be.::

Thankfully, scolding Kenjista for being rude was a handy distraction-- it was hard to scold someone so much larger than himself, but since she seemed to mind him, at least some of the time, Sentio still did it. Once the conversation settled back again into normalcy, it remained there, and Cacopheny's expression was relieved, so the subject didn't come up again. To Sentio's intense relief.