Small Steps to the Future
Chapter Seventeen: Plans
Riya woke the next morning feeling strangely lazy and sleepy-- strangely so, because he had long since mastered the ability to wake up all at once without being dragged down by lingering tiredness. For a long moment he was sorely tempted to go back to sleep. It was only the oddity of the feeling that made him struggle awake, shifting under the single sheet which had managed to stay on him all night through the warmth of the room. He opened his eyes in the dimness of the underground room, illuminated only by the lights from the hallway and the bathroom shining under their respective doors, and his sleepy, half-open gaze fell on a tangle of yellow limbs and silver tails on the bed beside him.
Suddenly, remembrance of the night before came flooding back and the sleepy feeling made sense: Evola, his bonded dragonet, was still asleep, and her mood was spilling over into him. With that realization, the feeling of tiredness faded, and Riya blinked his eyes more fully open, looking around the room as best he could without moving-- though he no longer felt sleepy, he didn't really feel much like moving, either, and he certainly didn't want to wake anyone else. He could see the lump of blankets that was Mister Military, on his bed across the room, and he could hear Cemitae snoring softly out of his range of vision. His eyes roved back to the dragonet-tangle that was the twins, and he couldn't help but smile.
After a few moments of enjoying the remains of sleepiness, Riya finally decided he had to get up. The bed wasn't really very comfortable, as twisted up as he'd gotten the sheets in his attempts to stay cool during the night, and the room itself was way too stuffy-- no windows and five bodies. He eased himself out of bed and across to the bathroom. After a deliberately chilly shower, he felt much better, and by then the rest of the room was stirring. Riya relinquished the bathroom to a sleepy-eyed Andy without a fuss, even offering a grin which the cadet seemed confused by but at least didn't answer with a growl, and padded back into the room, wringing his hair dry.
"Morning," Evola yawned from her and her brother's bed. They'd gotten themselves untangled, and she was busily trying to smooth down her fur with a shoot-bristled brush that Riya was sure he had never seen before.
::Of course you haven't,:: her voice drifted across his thoughts. ::Evoli conjured it from my room for me. You didn't really expect me to use my tongue, did you?:: Since that was exactly what Evoli was doing for his morning grooming, Riya felt it rather prudent not to respond. Evola flattened her ears at him, sensing his wry amusement, but she wasn't really offended, so he just grinned at her.
Cemitae was still looking half-asleep over on his bed, sprawled out on his belly with his wings spread and tail dangling off the mattress, the tuft brushing the floor. He mumbled a sleepy good morning to Riya, then yawned even more widely than Evola had. It was then that Riya realized, with a little start of surprise, that although both kits had spoken Avengaean, and although he wasn't wearing his translator, he had understood both of them.
::Of course you do,:: Evola told him primly, in the exact same tone she had used when thinking at him before. ::You're bonded to me now. You'll understand anything I understand.::
Feeling a bit overwhelmed, though in a pleasant sort of way, by that interesting tidbit, Riya answered simply, ::Oh.:: She shot him a playfully disgusted look that he hadn't figured that out on her own, and he flicked a little water from his wet hair at her. She yipped and rubbed frantically at the spot on her coat where the water had fallen with her brush, trying to fix the fur again. Riya chuckled and went back to toweling his hair.
"So where are we going now?" Evola asked after a moment.
"Huh?" Riya answered intelligently, confused by the sudden shift of subject and not quite sure what she meant.
"Well, we're bonded now, so we can't stay here," she explained. "These rooms are only for candidates and dragonets before they bond. Are we going back to your world?"
For a moment, Riya couldn't think, gripped again by the same blind panic that had caught him the night before, on the bonding complex lawn. Where would they go? He had imagined, when he dared think beyond the bonding ceremony itself, that there would be someplace waiting for them, some kind of training program to help them get used to being bonded and to Avengaea as a whole. He'd half-expected to stay on Avengaea at least until Evola was older, adult. He certainly didn't want to have to face UNIS and tell them he wasn't going to turn his new friend on Mars, not yet, not without some kind of back-up plan and place to hide out. The idea of setting Evola and her brother, innocent and playful, on people he knew made him feel slightly sick. The sound of Andy in the shower in the next room was, for that moment, the only sound to be heard.
Then, picking up his distress-- though thankfully not his direct thoughts, since Riya had yet to tell her the truth about who and what he was-- Evola set down her brush and hopped lightly over to the bed beside him, curling around him and putting her forepaws on his leg, looking up at him. "It's okay," she said, "maybe we can find a place here, in the city. I bet our parents will help out. Or we could go back to our village. Mom and Dad would love to meet you."
"Andy's going the fort this afternoon," Cemitae interjected, a little more awake now. "You can ask the people there if they'll help you find a place to stay. That's what Andy's gonna do."
"No one's going to make us do anything until we're grown up, anyway," Evoli added. "We're too young to be able to help much in the war, and there's still a lot of classes we can take. You know, magic and history and psi and tactics."
"Do they have anything for me?" Riya asked. "For the human part of the bonds?"
"Of course," Evola said airily. "Not as many, though. But you can take some of our classes with us, I bet."
Feeling a little better, Riya nodded. "Yeah, you're right," he said, half to himself, "they won't be expecting you guys to go off and fight-- fight demons or anything, not when you're only kids." Not evn UNIS could look at these dragon kits and expect to send them against Mars, not this young. He even managed a smile. "Okay, we'll go down to the fort with Mister Military in there and see what happens. How's that?"
"Perfect," Evola said with a smile, and she went back to her own grooming, letting Riya finish braiding his hair.