The temple was starting to fill, people loitering around the spires of the large natural cave, around which most of Zion was constructed, bunching in pairs and small groups, trickling in as the elders and captains gathered at the front. Magdalena stood by her drum, twin drum-beaters in hand, each nearly a foot long and tufted at the end with cloth to bring a rich, warm sound from the taught drumhead. As her eyes moved over the growing crowd, a smile played about her lips, and her mind was not on the coming speeches and dancing, not even on the rhythm she always looked forward to pounding out. Her thoughts were on the three shining eggs waiting for her high above the temple chamber and the two dragons guarding them.

"Hey, Mnemonic!"

Startled out of a daydream, Magdalena looked up sharply and blinked in surprise at Rain, standing just behind her and grinning like the big idiot he was. Magdalena grinned, feeling unusually cheerful tonight, and his head tilted as if he was surprised to be greeted with anything other than the usual sardonic cock of an eyebrow and annoyed purse of the lips, but quickly enough he was grinning, back.

"Magdalena, oaf!" she retorted, reaching around to give one of his usual black braids a tug, which surprised him into a laugh. "Or should I start calling you Braided? Hmm?"

"Twobraids," Rain corrected as she freed the object of her teasing again, leaning carefully on the skin of the drum. "Has a nice ring to it, actually." At her look, he shook his head, still smiling. "You can call me anything you like, honey, if you come dance with me."

The smile on her face faded away, and Magdalena looked away, out over the crowd. "I have to drum," she said, her best excuse. "I'm needed up here."

"Oh, come on," Rain wheedled, leaning in beside her, shoulder to shoulder. "Just one. I bet there's someone who could take your place."

In fact, there was, but Magdalena never let the boy have his turn. "I don't dance," she said, more firmly.

"Someday you will," Rain answered, sounding momentarily serious, out of character enough for Magdalena to glance at him. But then, with her eyes on him again, he winked comically. "If just to get me to leave you alone, I expect!"

"I'm as patient as I am stubborn!" Magdalena warned. "Now get. They're starting and I think Adele looks a little lonely down there."

The dark-haired girl was, indeed, giving Magdalena a dirty look for capturing Rain's attention and keeping him from the rapidly filling stone floor of the temple. Even though most of the time Magdalena would gladly let her have him, Adele still seemed to hold it against her that Rain seemed more interested in bothering Magdalena than flirting with her. Rather like now, as Rain glanced down at Adele with something less than interest. However, the counselors were coming to the rocky crag at the front of the temple-- or the back, however one took it-- in preparation for the beginning of the ceremony, so Rain was forced to make his way down to the floor, and predatory Adele, as Magdalena and her two fellow drummers on this side of the temple, and the three far opposite them, began a thundering staccato to get Zion's attention.

Counsellor Ranier held up his hands for silence, and the drums stilled, Magdalena and her fellows putting their hands gently over the vibrating skins and letting their echoes in the cave die out slowly.

"Welcome!" the counselor called to the gathered Zionites, and launched into whatever speech he'd planned for today. Other than to listen for the all-important cues winding up to the dancing, Magdalena didn't pay any attention, thoughts drifting back to the dragons as her eyes drifted back over the gathered citizens. Could they hear them, up there so many stairways and catwalks above them? Sense them, somehow, all these minds gathered and focused on the same thing, the same purpose? Would they feel the motion of the dancers once the drums began again, the feelings of the dancers once the passion of movement and rhythm took them? Would it disturb the eggs, all the sound and sensation so far below?

Ranier's voice was building up, drawing to the end of his speech. It didn't matter what he said: it was the same sort of thing they said at every temple gathering, about hope and freedom and the struggle that was life. Magdalena wondered what they would think if they knew about the hope that waited at the pinnacle of the city, but before she could do more than that, Ranier had stepped back, and it was time. The drums rolled, then pounded out a dance, and Magdalena lost herself in it, feeling the pulse of music and life while Rain, Adele, Saul and his lover, Derfergetz and Yana, and countless others danced to her rhythm.