Wasting Time
Chapter Nine: Exploration
After watching Mister Military's possibly painful suppression the apoplectic fit he so obviously wanted to throw when Riya came out of the bathroom with damp but very blatantly blue-stripped hair, loose to just below the seat of his pants, Riya decided that he should spend as much time away from their room as possible. Or at least away from him. That was hardly difficult or even unpleasant, though, for Riya had the entire bonding complex to explore, a whole city to discover, and beyond that-- beyond that there were forests and mountains and meadows and things Riya had only seen in pictures or from a distance. These were going to be the best three days of Riya's life, and he had them almost completely free; the only places he was expected to be were on the lawn for meals and at the nightly lectures on Avengaean culture and history.
So, after breakfast the next morning, at which he got a few curious looks for the streaks in his hair and the ear cuff he'd added to the top of his left ear and where Mister Military stonily ignored him, Riya set off to first figure out where everything was in the bonding complex. He was very good at finding his way around places; once he'd been somewhere, it was unlikely he'd be unable to find it again. So, the first place he went was the chamber he'd met the dragons in the night before. That was as good a starting point as any. It seemed central to the whole place.
As he entered the strange room, he paused, looking around. There were a few people-- or dragons, maybe, Riya wasn't sure-- in the room, but they didn't pay him much attention, continuing about their duties or passtimes. A few sat in the strange nest-things that ringed the room and a couple stood at the far end, talking amongst themselves. Riya glanced over them all briefly, noting what they were doing and if they seemed to mind the presence of a lone human, but they didn't, so he turned his attention to the room itself and its exits. There weren't very many: five, counting the one he had come through from the corridor with the offices that led to the lawn. To one side, to his right against the front wall, was an opening that led to the candidates' rooms. Riya didn't want to go there; he'd already been down it's length a few times, and there really wasn't much.
That left three unexplored tunnels. It sounded strange to call them tunnels, since they were smoothly carved and well-lit by magical halogen lights, but they were still rounded in that uniquely tunnel-like way, and they were undeniably underground, so Riya couldn't quite shake the title for them. He cross the oblong room, passing two knots of quietly talking individuals in their wall-hanging nests, to the tunnel leading farther into the mountains on the right. The gray-green flooring gave slightly under his feet-- he had the bizarre desire, as he had the night before when he first stepped onto the stuff, to try and walk across it barefoot and see what it really felt like-- and the conversations paused momentarily as the speakers glanced to him. Hands in his pockets, eyes roving over the ceiling and walls and floors, Riya tried to look as casual and unconcerned with whatever they were discussing as possible. He didn't even look at them. His show of unconcern did what it was supposed to do, and conversations resumed. It wasn't as if he could understand them, anyway; he didn't know the Avengaean language, and he didn't have his translator in place. The tiny electronic device was actually in his pocket, in case he needed it, but right now he didn't really want to deal with it; it made his ear hurt to wear it for too long.
No one stopped him as he strolled into the new corridor, so he continued, glancing around. It was just like the entry-way corridor: large enough for a full-sized Earth dragon to pace down, lit by more of those magical water-halogens, and with carefully smoothed walls and more of that strange, spongy flooring. The corridor was lined with doors, like the dorm wing only much more spread out, but these, two, were fully dragon-sized. Riya didn't know if he could even manage to open one on his own.
Thankfully, he didn't end up needing to fight open a door to find out what was in one of those rooms. The sound of a voice ahead of him, coming from a door that stood ajar near the end of the tunnel way, made him pick up his step a bit to reach it, curious. Peeking in through the crack between the door frame and the door itself, he saw what looked surprisingly like a classroom, only without the desks and chairs and with dragons instead of people. A slate of dark stone, remarkably like an ancient black chalkboard, stood at the front of the room, and the walls were papered with drawings that looked like they could be educational and maps of the surrounding area, the continent, and what could be other continents on the same planet, but they didn't look familiar to Riya. A tall Light dragon sat on his haunches in front of about six dragon kits: two Lights, an Air, a Fire, and two Waters. Riya had no idea what he was explaining to them, but he didn't think they would welcome an interruption, so he stepped back and turned back towards the oval meeting room. That hallway was obviously full of classrooms. One of them would probably be where they were supposed to go for those educational lectures after lunch and dinner.
Back across the oval room he drifted, this time completely ignored by the dragons or whatever they were talking amongst themselves. A peek down the hallway directly opposite the one with classrooms earned Riya a scolding and a cook chasing him back out into the oval room with her rolling pin. He was hard-pressed not to laugh at the funny picture the dragoness-turned-human made, pursuing him away from her ovens and cooling loaves. Obviously, he had found the kitchens, and he wasn't supposed to intrude there.
One more hallway left, Riya again crossed the squishy-floored room to the hall opposite his own dorm wing. As he walked down it, he frowned in thought, looking around. It wasn't just opposite to the hall where he and the other candidates were staying, it was almost exactly like it. The doors were the same distance apart, made with the same curving handles, and there was even a little lounge to the right similar to the lounge on Riya's side, with a round, delicately-carved table, pouf-like seats with clawed feet, and pillows that looked like overly fluffy bean-bag chairs. The only difference was that the doors themselves were a little wider than the doors on Riya's side, as if... as if meant for wings folded at the sides of a large Earth dragonet. This had to be the dormitory wing for the dragon kits! This had been the direction they'd come from when they came out into the meeting, too, which all but proved it.
Suddenly excited again, Riya put his hand on one of the door handles. He badly wanted to look inside and see what a dragon's bedroom would look like, but he didn't want to look too much like he was prying... Finally curiosity overcame him, and he turned the handle, opening the door just enough to peek in. A deep red dragonet sitting on something that looked half mattress and half nest-- a four-footed child's bed-- let out a squeal of surprise and Riya let go, backing away quickly.
"Sorry, sorry, wrong room," he explained hurriedly, apologetically, even a little truthfully-- he'd wanted an empty room, so this was hardly the right one for him to be looking at. The little Fire dragon glared at him, and he added lamely, "Got a bit lost...."
"Riya?" Again he jumped, whirling around to face the speaker, but once the shock of adrenaline faded, he recognized both voice and dragon.
"Evoli!" He grinned, a bit sheepishly.
"What are you doing here?" the little Air dragon asked, but Riya didn't have his translator on, so he couldn't understand. The Fire kit snapped something, and Evoli rustled his wings in what was probably an apologetic manner and shut the door, murmuring something that was more obviously apologetic.
"Hang on, just a sec." He held up a finger, fumbling in his jacket pocket for his translator. He flipped it on and settled it over his ear. "This is really shitty, not knowing what anybody's saying," he muttered as he adjusted the device a bit more comfortably.
Evoli grinned, a little shyly. "You might not want to know some things," he pointed out. "Ashana just called you something kinda rude."
Riya chuckled. "Oh, I'm sure I could've handled it. I'm used to being called rude names, and I bet most of them are a lot worse than what Ashana called me."
Evoli giggled. "So what are you doing out here, anyway?"
"Just exploring," Riya answered simply. "Avoiding Mister Military back in my room."
"Mister Military?"
"Oh, sorry, that's my nickname for James Anderson, that other kid from Earth, the one who was talking to the Fire dragonet yesterday."
"Oh, him." Evoli nodded a few times. "He didn't look like he relaxed at all...."
"I don't know if he knows how," Riya confided cheerfully. Evoli giggled again. "So did my little misadventure with Ashana there get your attention, or were you going somewhere?"
Evoli looked like he didn't know whether to be disappointed or happy as he answered, "Going somewhere... we've got class in a few minutes."
"Oh? You guys take classes?"
"Yeah. Not as many as we'd have if we weren't going to be bonding, but still, we take a few. Just to keep us busy, the grown-ups say." Evoli looked shyly up at Riya, scuffing the ground with his forepaws and rustling his wings in an obviously nervous fashion. Riya kept quite as he waited for the little dragon to work up the courage to say whatever he wanted to say. "Do you think I could meet you after, maybe?" he asked at last. "I could show you around the city, maybe...."
Riya broke into a grin, and Evoli relaxed with a bright smile of his own. "Yeah, I'd love that," Riya said, confirming what the kit had already guessed out of his expression. "Having somebody to show me around is loads better than me wandering around and getting lost, right?"
"Definitely right!" came another voice from down the hall. Both Riya and Evoli turned to look as Evola came prancing down the hallway, tail waving jauntily and wings half-open and waving slightly with each step. "I'll come too, I know all sorts of great places."
Unable to help a smile at the slightly-older sibling's instant self-invitation, Riya still noticed Evoli's ears drooping a bit and his tail lowering slightly. Even for a foreigner like Riya, that body language was unmistakable. ::We'll sneak off later,:: he sent privately to the disappointed youngster. ::Promise.::
Looking rather more cheerful at that, Evoli tacitly agreed to let his sister take over the tour of the city after the afternoon lecture, and Riya watched the two make their way to the classrooms on the other side of the complex, followed by other dragonets he thought he recognized from the meeting ceremony, and smiled.