Riya left Evola deep in conversation with her mother, Aresta. He'd stuck around until Aresta had asked him as many questions as she cared to, and he was being quite ignored by them both. Being ignored, combined with the uncomfortable chair and his general brooding sort of mood, and added to Evola's intense concentration on her mother equaled a perfect opportunity to escape for a little while. They wouldn't notice his absence until later, they didn't need any input from him and probably wouldn't for a while, and with Evola so neatly distracted, he could feel however he wanted to feel.

That was perhaps the only thing he didn't like about the current arrangement, the way their moods affected each other. Whenever Riya was down, he either dragged Evola with him, which made him feel guilty, or he had her bounding up to him to try and cheer him up. As much as he appreciated her caring, and as much as he hated making *her* feel bad, too, there were just times when he wanted a good mope. It sounded selfish and pessimistic, but the way he figured, it was only natural.

How can you be healthy if you're never down, just happy and active all the time? he mused. You'd go crazy, if you weren't already. Even Evola had her days when she was sad or frustrated, and though she tried to hide them behind flippancy and cheer, Riya could tell. The bond went both ways, after all.

Maybe someday we'll be able to commiserate together, he thought, but she's just too young to understand that sometimes being sad for a little while can be a good thing. I suppose I should be glad she's not one of those adolescents who thing it's a bad thing to be happy, at least. If I think this is bad, what would it be like to be tied to the emotions of one of those tragic types? Even the thought made him shudder.

Once he'd slipped from the street Evola and Aresta's cafe was situated on, Riya wandered around the quiet streets. Quiet, because this wasn't even the city-proper, inside the dome, but only the few buildings set outside. The streets between those buildings were obviously, then, less crowded than the streets within. Also quiet, because technically this was a work-day, as the midsummer holiday wasn't for four days-- the day of the bonding ceremony, in fact-- and is wasn't time for lunch yet. Not every dragon in Sanctuary worked, but a large number of them did, and the rest tended to stay indoors if they weren't out for a flight or a run over the valley meadow beyond the city. It made sense, too, or at least to him, since it was the height of summer again. Though this summer wasn't as hot as the last one, Riya still could feel the sun pelting down on his head, and his dark hair just soaked it up. Already he could feel his temperature inching towards uncomfortable, and without even really thinking about it, he angled towards the comforting shelter of the trees.

Trees weren't very common on Earth, not anymore, and certainly not in the places Riya had been able to frequent; he heard about forests, carefully protected, on the over-used planet, but he'd never been able to visit one. They didn't exist, period, on Mars. The novelty of the feeling of walking through a forest-- especially a forest full of trees bigger than nearly all species of the same on Earth-- still hadn't quite worn off yet, so on the rare occasions Riya had free time, he generally found himself out here. The sound of a breeze through the tops of the trees, the rare bird call, and otherwise silence-- it was amazingly relaxing.

Everything is so different here, he found himself thinking, and not for the first time. It felt like he was thinking it every day, sometimes. Comparing it to Earth was a common pass-time among the cadets, but Riya often ended up comparing it to Mars, because he couldn't seem to shake himself of the feeling that, that was his home.

Though I'll probably never see it again, he thought bitterly, unless it's from the perspective of a soldier attacking it.

No, he would never, ever do that. If it came down to that, he would abandon anything and anyone, run out into the forests of Avengaea and never be seen by UNIS again. Evola would come with him, and probably Evoli, too-- they'd promised him, when he first told them who he was, that they would never betray him or the planet he'd been raised on. Evoli, especially, didn't like the idea of going to fight anything, on any planet, not even demons or, the other currently talked-about enemy, hydras. The Hathian war that so many dragons had been sent to made the poor boy petrified, almost the way that war against Mars petrified Riya, just for different reasons. 

Even if he escaped UNIS punishment, though, even if he escaped with both of the Air dragons, what good would that do? Two dragons and one human would hardly be able to stand between the seven dragons that the Specials would pick up-- they wouldn't even stand easily between the three the cadets had bonded to, already. Not that Cemitae would like to go against his friends, but he didn't know what he would do if Andy forced the choice on him. They couldn't even get to Mars, much less protect it and the people on it.

I'm not doing anything, am I, Dad, he thought, as if somehow his father could hear him. Not that he'd speak that freely with Malagai Kethron, anyway. I bet you think I'm dead-- or, more likely, defected. You always were threatening me with what you'd do if I defected, as if you expected it at any moment. As if.

Malagai never could understand that his son was unshakable in his loyalty-- if not to Mars, than at least to his father. All he saw was less than enthusiastic participation in protests and an utter refusal to engage in any kind of combat. As if that was somehow a sin, to be in favor of peace. Or to not think the way Malagai did, perhaps that was really the problem. The great rebel leader had a compromise-favoring, peace-loving whiner for a son. He just didn't know how to understand someone who wasn't gun-toting and war-crazed, Riya figured.

If I keep going like this, I'm really going to be in a mood, Riya thought. A strong enough bad mood would distract Evola, no matter how involved she was in something else-- Dammit, I just want to have a simple temper-tantrum and be done with it, or something stupid and childish like that.

He stopped and leaned against a tree, shutting his eyes and running through one of the centering exercises the psionics had him practice before they got down to business. Maybe a little distraction was in order, himself, and he hadn't actually practiced for the sake of practice in a while.

Psionics was something Riya felt he was good at. As long as he didn't compare himself to his dragons-- which wasn't hard, since they were a different species, and also of a breed in that species that was predisposed to magic and psi-- he could feel very good about how fast he was progressing. Under the tutelage of someone who knew even more than the captain about the subject-- even if that someone was something of a flake, or very caught up in himself, like their primary instructor Yihoto often was-- he'd learned so much more and so much more quickly. In a world where the only other things he seemed good at were mixing drinks and making enemies, every little bit helped.

So he slid down to sit at the base of the immense tree, settled until he was comfortable, and smoothed his breathing until it was steady and regular. It didn't take much to get centered, as the psi instructors called it, not anymore, though his first month or so had been spent trying to just figure out how to get there to begin with, much less staying there. There had just been one day where it had finally clicked, and he could finally move on-- and move on, he had.

One of the easiest things to do was to just open one's mind and look around for other minds nearby. Riya was sure he was comfortably alone in this part of the forest, so there would be no harm in that. Maybe he could see how far he could "look". His perpetual shields went down with a little fight-- he always felt so vulnerable without them, now that he knew how to keep his thoughts protected-- and he cast about with mental senses, expecting to find nothing, and finding....

Something. His eyes popped open, and he found that he was not, as he'd thought, alone.