The trip across the sand felt a lot longer than it really was, and Cath was discouraged to find, when they reached the end of the sand, that they still had farther to go, up a grassy hillside strewn liberally with boulders and hunks of gnarled wood, probably also left the storms in the past. The dragon continued inexorably up the slope, pausing and looking back often as if it felt its charges were going too slow. There wasn't much to be done for it, however: Cath's left ankle was definitely sprained, though he didn't think he'd broken it, Samuel was moving with a stiffness that suggested he'd been badly bruised along his back, and both brothers were exhausted after their brush with death. So, the impatient dragon would just have to take its tagalongs as they were, Cath thought with some amusement.

For some reason, the dragon hadn't ask why Sam had yet to make a sound, which was somewhat odd as everyone asked that very question eventually, but maybe it had just assumed he was the quiet type. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter to Cath; he was just glad he didn't have to try and come up with an explanation that would satisfy an outsider when he was feeling this under the weather. It was hard enough under normal circumstances.

The Goldstein brothers had always been rather strange, for as long as the two of them could remember. Samuel, who was presumed the younger twin, had never spoken a word for as long as anyone could remember, and he was oddly silent in other ways, too, unable to scream or laugh or anything, though there seemed nothing terribly wrong with his throat. Cath, however, was loud enough for both of them, and twice as odd, prone to not only mood swings, but odd twitches when he was stressed, and subject to a lot of quirks. No one had ever gotten a straight answer out of the only speaking member of the duo, Cath, as to why they were the way they were, and that was the way the brothers intended to keep it.

Truth be told, they weren't entirely sure themselves. All they knew was that something happened when they were seven, just before the inhabitants of the specus "Infusco" found them wandering along the beach, and that their memories prior to that were fuzzy and conflicting. Their first year at the specus was like one long nightmare, as both twins struggled to adapt to their new home and put whatever happened in their past behind them. Their caretakers in the dragon-home were sympathetic, though often frustrated, and assumed they had gone through some major trauma before they were found. That was basically what Cath and Sam assumed, as well, but the nature of that "trauma" was likely quite different than everyone else assumed-- they knew it had nothing to do with the storm that supposedly killed their parents or the hypothetical shipwreck. They didn't really even remember that, and what little memory of their parents they still had didn't have much to do with ships and gypsies.

When Cath had led Sam to run away back when they were fourteen, it had been as much to get away from their murky past as for the freedom of the sea. It had worked well enough, until recently, when nightmares they'd thought long banished had started resurfacing, waking them both simultaneously in the middle of the night, sharing the images and emotions through their linked minds, no matter which of them actually had the dream. Cath should have guessed that it was a warning that something was going to change, and for the worst, but he had never been into all that mystical stuff, so it hadn't been the first explanation to come to mind. It had, however, been bloody annoying.

They crested the rise, then, and the dragon had already begun its decent. Approaching quickly was a slim, dark-haired woman, burdened with a large bundle of cloth. "Hail!" she called, waving enthusiastically from the bottom of the small hill-- tiny, really, though there was another one to cross before they reached wherever they were going. Cath perked up a little; he knew women, they were much more interesting and enjoyable to deal with than men. Besides, he could use a little cosseting about now. Sam, catching the hint of that thought, shot him an amused but also somehow annoyed look, and he shrugged with a grin.

::Can't help who I am, mate,:: he said philosophically. Sam sighed soundlessly but didn't reply.

The brothers made their way down the hill, following the dragon, met halfway by the woman-- presumably the dragon's rider. She was, to Cath's mild disappointment, not as young as he'd originally thought-- probably in her late thirties. Still, older women were sometimes just as susceptible to a pretty face as younger ones, and every bit as sensual, if not sometimes more so. Of course, Cath didn't know if he counted as a pretty face right now: shivering, still rather wet, badly bruised, clothing mostly in shreds, and quite likely with sand in his hair. He gave her a hopeful, winsome smile anyway. Her eyes, black and sharp, crinkled at the corners as she grinned, back.

"Sodom told me he found you," she said, her voice slightly rough but still pleasant. "I brought you some blankets, you must be freezing." She unrolled the fabric she'd been carrying, revealing that is was, indeed, a pair of thick felt blankets, which she wasted no time in draping around the brother's shoulders in a concerned, almost motherly manner.

"The dragon?" Cath asked, trying to keep his teeth from chattering as he pulled the blanket around him for warmth.

"Yes, his name's Sodom, didn't he say? No? Well, it is, and I'm Gomorrah. Pleasure to meet you both." She rubbed vigorously over the blanket on Cath's shoulders and arms, making him feel rather like she was, indeed, taking the motherly role with the two wayward "boys". Damn. He hated when women did that. As she moved on to Sam, tugging him down so she could rub the blanket like a towel over his short, curly, currently sandy hair. If Sam looked that bad, Cath didn't want to think how dirty his own hair was, for it was much, much longer.

"So, you know our names," Gomorrah said as she released Sam. "Only fair I know yours."

"Cath," Cath answered quickly. "And Sam," he added, motioning to his brother with his head, and winced, regretting he'd done so, as his headache resurfaced at the movement.

"Pleasure," Gomorrah said again, smiling. "Come on, the specus is close, just over the southern hill there." She waved a hand to a hill, the path through the grass leading there parallel to the shoreline. "You need some warming up and some drying off, I think." She started off across the hillside, but at a much slower pace than Sodom, her dragon, had been setting. Sam and Cath limped along behind her, Sodom now bringing up the rear. "I take it that awful storm washed you up, right?"

"Aye," Cath agreed. "Bloody smashed my ship, too," he grumbled.

"Should I send out to look for other survivors?" Gomorrah asked, sounding a little concerned but for some reason not asking the obvious question as to why she was "his" ship. Most dragon-folk didn't know much about sailing, but few of them thought someone as young as Cath would be a captain. They were mostly right, too; at twenty-three, Cath was actually a fairly young captain.

"Could," Cath answered, "But if there were other servivers, they didn' come up on tha' shore. 'Ad a full galley's worth fer a crew, but ne'er saw where they got to, once Windchaser wen' under." It was something of a miracle that both Sam and Cath had survived, in fact, when Cath thought about it.

"Ah," Gomorrah said. "Well, you tell them at the specus there might be others, and they'll go looking, I'm sure." Before Cath could ask why Gomorrah couldn't tell them, herself, she continued, "It's a pretty big specus, one of the biggest on the continent, even. Certainly the luckiest."

"Why's that?" Cath asked, as Sam made his own interest known to his brother without words. Though Cath had figured dragons to be all right, Sam had always rather liked them.

"There's a clutch on the sands," Gomorrah replied, as if everyone should know. "First one on Adcoa in almost two years. Took 'em long enough, I say."

Sam's interest peaked, and Cath gave him a warning look. At Infusco, all that long time ago, there had actually been the hope that the pair of them would bond dragons, themselves. Even then, Cath didn't think he'd have wanted that kind of responsibility, that kind of tie, and now he certainly didn't. How could he go back to sea if he were stuck with a dragon that would only barely fit on deck?

Already he could see where Sam's mind would be going, though, and he planned to put a stop to it before it got there. ::No,:: he sent firmly. ::We're not standin' fer a hatching. We're not ev'n stayin' tha' long! Jus' here to get new clothes an mebbe a good night's sleep. Thas it.::

::Why not? It wouldn't hurt things just to go to one,:: Sam retorted, sounding quite reasonable. ::Just this once, if they let us. If we don't, we'll never know what could have happened. Even if we don't get chosen at all, at least we'd know.::

::A'least you'd know, yeh mean,:: Cath corrected sourly, but let the subject drop for now, turning his attention back to Gomorrah. Their silent conversation had lasted only a couple heartbeats, but it was enough of a pause that she would be expecting him to say something by now. "Thas... really big, then," he said lamely. "Didn' know clutches were so rare."

"Just lately," Gomorrah said, sounding a little sad, but she cheered quickly enough, adding, "The hatching is supposed to be soon, too. Within the next couple of days."

::See?:: Sam prodded. ::It won't be an inconvenience at all, we're really only just in time.::

Cath refused to answer, pointedly paying more attention to his footing and Gomorrah than his brother's pointless wish to stand at a hatching. What would either of them do with a dragon? Join the specus standing armies? Hardly.

Then they were cresting the shielding hill and Gomorrah waved ahead of them. "And there we are, boys," she said. "The specus."

Cath and Sam both stopped short and stared at the complex of buildings rising in the shore-side valley below them, the horribly familiar complex of buildings, with dragons and people coming and going from it.

Infusco Vere. The one specus neither brother wanted to see again, that the hand of fate had somehow dragged them back to.