Snakes and Ladders-37

Chapter 37

*Before…

~Ha, you’re like Shaya you both love to circle the tree. ~

~It's amazing and the view with it and the lake and the city it’s just amazing. ~

~Yes it is!~ He launches into the sky and he does a dipping glide over the water gaining speed and them he’s climbing and we catch a thermal and we bank going with it and up and, and up and them we start to go around The Great Tree a little dragon like a bush plane in front of a literal mountain of a trunk and we’re coming around it and leveling off and I take a breath and channel the power into the memory of a perfect song for this and we’re coming around the bend of the tree to get the lake into sight and the city after that and I’m replaying.

*Bonny Portmore* in my head as I’m flying back to my love on dragon back.

*And Now…

The city is really something else but as we pass over it and the walls we head out and over the plains and to me that’s all sorts of amazing too.

The entire Holy city area is cupped in mountains to the south until north east and in the north of the city is a huge mass of forested foothills that seem to go on and on. They’re big really, really high but not like mountain high but certainly very Tennessee old coal country hills.

From the north by north-west to the west are the plains that we’re flying out over and there’s dirt trade roads cutting through the plains and even a few intersections as well but it’s this sea of three foot or so high grasses that just keep going for leagues.

I’m still reeling some even being here as long as I have at the sheer scope of this place.

I mean my head’s still working with the idea of this planet is actually bigger than earth by a lot and it’s because there’s less of a gravitational thing here that life’s sort of the same, except for the much longer day periods.

I’m just caught by moments of beauty here, of alieness but not.

~Aye it’s like that for me as well, Dragons are just as alien to Sylvania as Humans are only we got her a lot longer ago. But where we reside in these realms it’s very different culturally. ~

~Forgive me for being dense but I wasn’t aware that you had a culture or a civilization; I mean I always associated dragons with wilderness and independence. ~

He banks and he catches a thermal and we rise up really fast and it’s thrilling because I can feel the wind on flesh and bone in that sort of way that you feel the hum of rope in your fingers when you’re sailing.

And I’m not him…I can just imagine that rush inside if that was my flesh and bone rising and gliding through the air with little effort and defying the bonds of gravity.

~We do but by and large most dragons here and perhaps other places have flights and those are like clans here and within the flights there’s families and we have a home ground place but it is also a place for our riders very often and it is where we bear our young, care for our old and bury our dead and those sorts of things. ~

~Has Shaya been there? ~

~Yes, when Shaya became a rider she came to us and given the things in her past life there was a council on it. That and she had come to our home on her own and that is nearly unheard of for the location is a secret of the riders and the dragons alone. ~

~Nearly unheard of? ~

~There’s been others but those are few and far between and in every case they all because riders of great deeds. ~

I smile. ~I like the thought of that and Shaya after all she had been through actually making her way there. ~

~As did I that’s why I met her to bind with her. ~

We pick up speed and then we’re heading off banking to another direction until we hit the point of us finding a leyline and that’s so…odd. I mean you’d think, most people would thing that a leyline is just on the ground but no…there’s some in the sky too and this has a different feel to the mana that is gathered and flowing through here and I feel Bhlaze open himself up and it’s like sort of almost feeling a solar panel charging up or something and I feel him pulling the power into himself and then there’s that jump.

Welding flash brilliant white and I feel this feeling that’s like being stretched to the point of where we’re going like reaching out to catch hold of something with every muscle fibre that you have and then it’s like falling forward to get there and there’s this wave of like inertia like you were travelling that catches up with you once you come through.

Not unlike the forward feeling that goes through you when you have touchdown on a plane.

We bank as we’re there again back over that base in the steppe like part of these mountain here in The Darklands and we circle on the way down a few times and the place is pretty heavily guarded from the things here with the troops and I see the airship that’s there being worked on by people and it’s sort of a patch job I imagine after what had happened in that hangar area/dry dock.

That was a fight, that wasn’t just a battle but that was a boss fight and we barely cleared the level but we didn’t take out the boss he retreated to likely plague us further on down the road.

I really need to do better with the fighting things even if I really stopped that sort of stuff back home.

As Bear I have enough moments that were young and angry enough to make what I was feeling and all that dysphoria stuff worse.

Y’know if ya gotta be a monster and all that.

That got better as I got older and more tired of living life hurting and angry and sort of turning all of that stuff into energy to help defend girls I knew and loved.

And that helped, that likely saved me really.

I have things here now, important things…Shaya, her family, her people…almost my people a little bit. I mean I adore her father who seems for such an important man so down to earth.

Mind you that was away from that palace and in his Camp David spot so yeah big differences.

Kyte, Bhlaze, Ilisa…the rogue…commander Falcon all are friends.

And I really don’t like greedy class mongering warlords.

We come into that general area winging in and heading for those double doors and the warehouse sort of place that was carved from the caves where they’re taking count of things and where everyone is camped too.

A sylvan camp is very different to me and it really sort of reminds me of those colonial sort of British ones where everyone has all these things or someone carries a part of the amenities for camping and such like the folding cloth and framed chairs and cots and then tents are actually pretty elaborate too and they have these weighted bases for camping that the rods and stuff click into instead of being pegged into the ground.

I see Shaya with Kyte and she’s coming out of the counting area to come and meet us and I slide off oh Bhlaze’s back and saddle to go and meet her and pull her into a kiss and a face nuzzle.

She leans into me and into my hands and it’s just one of the greatest things really having that sort of relationship linked or not where she leans on me as a source of comfort and I can feel the tension from her dysphoria attach she went through earlier leaving her.

I think that honestly it’s one of the biggest keys to our relationship besides the facts of how we got together and that’s we have that in common.

Yes we’re mystically changed, healed into being a match on the outside of who we really were on the inside but we’re still both trans and there’s a very real and good thing that we get each other when we go through this stuff.

I kiss her a little more and I let her lean on me inside and much as outside and there’s a mental sort of feeling there from Bhlaze that’s more like a feeling that I’m getting than a projected one and that he’s tired and he’s wants to rest as much as I do and Shaya does.

I love the fact that Shaya just smiles a little of that getting better but not there yet kind of thing and we both head over and walk with Bhlaze over to our where we’re going to camp ourselves finally.

Kyte comes and she’s helping take some of the bags off and setting them aside from Bhlaze’s harness and she’s giving him looks and she’s got that look that kids get in barns when helping with horses and they’re not used to it.

I don’t suppose many people have a chance to be this close to dragons really and I grin at her. “Everything go well?”

“Boringly so, I’m not one for all this book keeping.”

“It’s important stuff.”

She looks at me and she sighs and there’s some pain there. “Book and numbers were never my strengths as I trained. I was barely granted leave by my family to do that much or be that useful to involve myself in the things of our family holdings and our estates would have been too much.”

“I knew people home like your family and that thinking isn’t just wrong it’s also wasteful of talent really.”

She looks at me. “I’ve thought so too I was told that I’d be dishonoring my uncle who was running the estates and the finances since I was a babe.”

I reach over and rub her shoulder. “You’re more than a blade Kyte and you’re more than just marriage material either.”

She pouts. “I’m not much of marriage material really back home I’m a woman who fights and wears armor and trousers instead of dresses and I can bear no children. I’m just barely tolerated because of my rank and my shield.”

Shaya looks to her. “I could speak to Kailyn about seeing if he can heal you?”

Kyte’s eyes widen and then she shakes her head. “My family wouldn’t allow it, it would put us into you debt in a way they’d never ever allow.”

I look at both of them. “Is Shaya’s family hated this much?”

Shaya does this nod and shrug. “It’s Skywood, it’s rich beyond reason and at the same time it was the realm that was given to Uncle Lyam he had control over that since before the war really when he married my aunt from there who was the daughter of The Clan Skywood’s princess and he won great favor when he walked away from being a Highwood and taking the Skywood clan name.”

And Kyte adds in. “He was very strongly spoken in favor of house Highwood sharing its secrets and opening up the throne.”

I shake my head and pull off the saddle as Shaya gets all of the harnessing. “Of course he’d want that because he didn’t get the family secrets when he didn’t become King.”

Shaya nods as she’s taking care of the straps and things. “He would rant about that, rant about Dorian the farmer and Dorian the minstrel and my mother the scullery trollop.”

I look at that. “Scullery trollop?”

Shaya nods. “My mother’s folk were of noble birth but they had lost everything and in the fashion of many who lose things they left Highwood for the Holy Planet and she as a result of that was raised in The Holy City and while titled she was a cleaning girl that worked in inns and taverns and cleaned many of the shrines and temples. She gets looked down on for that an awful lot.”

Kyte nods. “There’s great consternation of the High Queen being that as well as the fact that she is one of the most powerful wielders of magic still living.”

I nod. “She healed me, made me whole.”

Shaya smiles. “Kailyn taught her that spell, she taught him and he went on to learn and develop other things. She taught Brennan too and he went his own way with his magic too and is much more focussed on things like words and sigils and runes.”

I look at her. “So you learned your magic from?”

Shaya says. “Some was mother but I and Jaiden were bad students for that but some was Lyam and my knightly teachers but that’s all very basic things the rest I learned as a rider.”

Kyte says. “I’ve little magic or ability I can channel into devices with my power to use things others have made and that is it really.”

I look at her. “Not everyone can do magic Kyte, nowhere close.”

She nods. “But it’s another strike against me when those of title are expected to be able to at least do a few things. I struggle with cantrips.”

I look at her and give her a hug. “Then we get you some of those things and we get you some time to see Kailyn for a consult regardless of what your family might think because life is too short to let other people control it.”

She nods and she looks ready to cry some and I look to Shaya. ~Love can she stay with us? Honestly she’s have no support and she never really has. ~

I let her feel the whole momma-wren feelings and yeah I can’t help it I like her and she reminds me of a kid that has had no support in her life or much love either.

I was never that kind of parent and I never will be.

She smiles at me and Kyte. “It’s been a long day why don’t you join me and Wren tonight and you and I can share in her surprises.”

“But…I’d be intruding…” (Sniffle.)

I squeeze her a little more. “Nope, Shaya and I feel the same way about this…you’ve been alone in life for too long Kyte and I really feel like spoiling you along with Shaya tonight.”

(Sniffle.) “Uhm…okay?”

We get Bhlaze settled with a room that I use several fire spells on to heat the stones and we make sure he’s comfy and Shaya and Kyte give his scales a good brushing to clean him off and things and I get things ready in out place and I use some rope and the wall sconces to make a line to start to hang the bolts of cloth I bought in the city.

Then it’s three grass mats I had rolled up to take the stone coldness from the floor and a rolled up Shaelani carpet as a sort of back stop and I have a couple of fleeces that I bought too and then I have some extra blankets and quilts but also a whole bunch of travel pillows.

They’re inflatable leather with an air sign on them and you touch power to them to inflate them and deflate them and I have lots of pillow cases and covers and I have a dozen pillows all around while I add the blankets and quilts and make the whole thing into a blanket and pillow for tent and then at the front of the tent I have the cooking things I bought and start heating things up and taking things out as the girls come in and settle in and I smile at them.

“Dinner and junk and TV.”

Shaya and Kyte look at me. “TV?” They both say in unison.

“Wondertales from home, I’ve come up with a way to show you how to see them and I can share things from home I hope.”

We I make cheeseburgers with ground meat and as close to the condiments as I could find and the cheese and the buns were easy and frying pan cooked chips now that I know that potatoes are such a thing here and I have chocolate and cookies that are really the closest thing to graham wafers and I bought marshmallows there too and I make smores.

And using some of the sound power ideas from my air horn blast and focusing a light spell as a more of a tube based TV and stuff to show things I create a sphere that lets me show them things.

A little power in my memories to do a recall spell and I show them. “The Secret of Nimh.”

It works and while it’s strange for me to experience it this way basically replaying things from locked up memory wisps it’s so much fun to watch these two be just girls and themselves and just get lost in things.

And snuggling with a truly happy Shaya is pretty awesome too.