*Before…

“Wren…take the memory charm that Bhlaze taught you and apply that to your body…instead of calling things up though use it to record this, all of this and apply it directly to your body using magic to reinforce your muscle memory.”
Well…okay then…
And boy oh girl was that easier said than done.
It’s trying to pour power into the feeling of everything you’re doing while you’re trying to boost everything you’re doing and trying to spar and train and keep from getting your patootie kicked.
But after a few more hours I’m getting used to that even as I’m getting just crazy exhausted from doing all of these things.
We stop and she looks at me. “Okay let’s break and we can set up camp.”
“We’re not going back?”
“Not tonight, I want Kyte to have a full night of command. It’ll look better and it’ll be better than just us being gone for part of the day.”
“Good point.”
“Plus we’re going to be doing a lot more training.”
“Oh damn.”
We stop and get out of our armor and we set up a fire and our bedrolls and she takes out things to cook like ranger rations and it’s a pot of water and these bricks of salt and poultry with dried chopped veggies and herbs and salt and it’s all bound up into dried noodles.
Holy cheese we’re having sylvan instant ramen.

*And Now…

Honesty I’d balk at instant ramen.

Driving truck I have eaten them more times that I ever want to remember and both nuked or cooked or even dry.

Sometimes long haul driving you eat what you have.

Or have time for.

And sometimes because you are bored.

It was all of that for me back then and the added bonus of being trans and filling that void with taste and treats and honestly that whole dopamine effect and even just the sensation of taste.

Like everything Sylvan there that like lifespan of thought in them.

Something like a soft bouillon soup so more fudge like than powder and these really dense sort of buckwheat noodles that pump up to like being super thick and them there’s spices and this rich soup and the poultry is deboned squab and shaya adds it all to boiling water and has a small onion like bulb she sliced into simple strands and adds a few mushrooms she picked sometime somewhere.

We finish eating and then we’re right back to it.

Channeling power into moves and memory and muscles and nerves.

I mean it is sort of cheating but as Shaya explains it’s not.

High Sylvans, high blooded and high trained Sylvan’s are an entirely different animal than everyone else here.

They fight like experts because they are.

They fight like superheroes and jedi because they can.

And unless you can fight on their levels you’re...I’m a dead woman.

I’d rather not be that, especially after just finding her and all of my life here.

I’m just getting started and I want to live it.

We go for more hours on hours until I’m steaming with sweat and starving and she is too.

But still we just stop for trail food, rations like cereal bars and then fruit and there’s broth that she makes from these leaf wrapped pods that’s frankly delicious and heavily tasting like game meat made into either stock or dust or both and garlic and the herbs which the only one I recognize is rosemary or something like it.

We drink the entire pot of soup and eat real elvish or Sylvan wheybread with it.

It literally is mystical.

The way she describes it is that it’s a pastry layered with this flour made by the druids that has cheese whey powder in it and that there’s butter for the fats and then there’s honey called star honey baked between the layers of the pastry and it’s filled with a heavy cheese that’s filled with whey powder and a sort of cream cheese and a jelly from fruit. The ones we have are fig filled.

The magical part is from the star honey that is from hives that rest on ley lines and the honey is charged with mystical power so it helps recharge people faster in both their bodies and in their power.

The druids bake this with a special ritual that lets your body break down the wheybread far better than we can do even naturally and faster.

The rest is just food energy and protein.

It tastes like something like if baklava met a jam and cheese danish.

They’re really good and filling and they do fill you with energy.

Heck the army home would adore these as rations.

And I’m oddly reassured in the fact it’s not just magic it’s like magic boosting science.

After using the “bathroom” we start training all over again.

This time it’s evasion with Bhlaze firing stun bolts at both of us like he’s spitting sunflower or watermelon seeds.

There’s another learning curve too because he isn’t really spitting and it costs hit like zero power to do it and he’s fast.

Literally able to fire as he wishes as he sees us.

Even Shaya’s not perfect in this set of drills.

He literally takes over training us as both as he’s working her too and he flew off and fetched firewood which were several logs that we had to cut and split with sword strokes.

That’s damn near impossible without magic.

Even with magic it’s supremely hard as it takes skill to not get your sword stuck in the logs he brought.

Shaya gets different drills than I do where she’s working on channeling his might into her body.

That’s hard because dragonrider or not no one is built for that so it’s like building up a tolerance.

Me it’s a skill thing with my blade.

I do get better at it, sort of doing these moves like the chopping slices of an axe.

Which is not what he wants but… ~It’s a beginning.~

It’s hard and he adds in us sparring with each other a few times too and by the time we are done bhlaze’s instructions we are exhausted and with the sun starting to set we are done for the day.

But we have firewood which Shaya dries out so we can use it and we even have a rough sort of bench of the biggest split log.

We have a sponge bath to get off the worst of the stink and I’m flabbergasted and hitting my hand to my forehead when Shaya uses the tea/coffee pot to heat our water and as long as it’s not too hot it’s a good rinser.

Especially with more water ready in our cooking pot.

It’s my turn to cook.

And looking through our rations I see some things that I can use.

We have pasta curls that sort of look like apple peelings in shape and we have some cheese and there’s butter of course and we have these milk pods that are gelatinized milk that are another druid thing and melt into milk just by adding water.

I make us Mac and Cheese.

They don’t have Mac and Cheese either. The closest thing is several noodle or long pasta and cream styled dishes and cheese is used as a condiment.

And they don’t have Italian food so they have like pasta and they have sauces for it and they have cooked veggies that they add into it. There is no red sauce, there is no pizza, there is no calzones.

Oh my poor Shaya.

It was really good by the time it was done it’s not the same as home and leaning really closer to this sort of white cheddar version. I made a bit too much sauce but I’m definitely not used to this pasta either.

It was still good plus Shaya and I ate right from the pot scooping the cheesy gooey pasta on the forks and feeding each other and kissing sharing these quiet laughs and cuddling together for warmth.

I’m doing this all beside this small fire with this raven haired elven princess and a dragon on top of this rise that’s defensible with a dragon behind us as the night sky just comes alive out here because we’re so open showing me stars I could never dream of.

And as breathtaking as all that is they still don’t match up with Shaya or how beautiful she is especially just being something as simple as being happy.

I feel her feeling the same way about me.

Knowing my past, who I was trapped as.

Who I am now.

~Bright as a light spell, warm as a hearth, as beautiful as a field of sunflowers.~

It made my breath catch and my heart skip then sing as Shaya kisses me.

Soft and sweet, she’s as new to being with me as I am with her and there’s still this incredible rush of our bodies and this linked pleasure slipping through our bond.

We’re like ember and tinder to our sexual heat.

Our fire and then we’re together in our opened and mixed bedrolls one as a bottom and the other as our blanket and we’re stripping each other and touch, kissing.

There is no feeling like this.

There is nothing as solid ever as your partner, your lover understands how much each touch means to you as a woman. As who you were both meant to be. You need to give her as much as you’re getting from this, you want it to be a thing that sinks into your bones.

God honestly, honestly this...us...it sinks into that pain I have held inside of my like that arthritic rub.

We’re slow too, taking our time and letting it all sink in and be as we taste and explore and finger and stroke but stroking insides that was where we both always needed.

Having those realm orgasms and riding over each others with the link is the deepest of sexual experiences and one of the most spiritual things I’ve ever done.

I couldn’t believe how beautiful Shaya could be on top with firelight playing over her pale skin and the stars all behind her.

We’re alone save for Bhlaze who watches over us while ignoring our mating. Being our watchful wall because he’s linked in too in his own way so he gets how desperately we need this.

We’re humanoids so the actions we’re doing isn’t that interesting to him.

The emotional stuff with Shaya and I he’s protective of.

It’s needed in the world, love is needed in the world.

Healing is needed in the world.

So as we make love he ignores us but approvingly so and he keeps watch and defends us.

God life is such a mix.

I mean I’m in my healed body with my beloved who is literally an elven princess and there’s a dragon and I’m on an alien planet.

And yet it’s still so perfectly familiar and comfortable that I fall asleep with the scents of the campfire and being outside and camping.

I have always loved camping.

And not the big campgrounds sort of stuff but those are fine too if that’s all you get but I like really outside someplace deeper and bigger.

I tried to take the wife and kids to do things like that before everything in life got too urban. It was sort of important to me as I’m a kid from some pretty old crappy suburbs.

This right now and I’m sure that it might get old is nice.

And snuggled and intertwined with Shaya under the bedroll blanket and up so high. Plus that added bonus of all that work and all those times we brought each other to our bliss I sleep deeply and soundly.

Oh Sylvan’s use bliss or reaching your bliss as one of the many nice ways or saying orgasm or getting off.

We dream too.

Shaya dreams of flying and this sort of plan of what might come in the places that we have to visit and bring the messages to. She dreams of this cabin of logs and stacked stones built into the side of a mountain on a plateau there’s a cavern entrance or a mine entrance beside it and there’s a lake with steam coming off of it.

She dreams of us dancing together, in the palace her in a uniform cut to flatter everything she has and me in a dress that matches.

I love the thought of that dress and would be terrified to touch it.

Strapless and a bustier of yellow silk threaded to highlight this almost amber, almost glass like lace and there’s actual gold in the support piece that lifts up my breasts while revealing and mystifying them and it’s all coming in tight to everything and then there’s this delicate layers of yellow gauze sheer material as the skirt.

She made me look so beautiful and yet in the dream it’s just a dress and things it’s me that is her focus.

It is life changing to have someone dream of you and you know it as a real thing in your life.

I dream.

I dream of home.

Of snippets of camping with friends and family as a kid.

Of past knowing I wasn’t who I was supposed to be when I seen the other kids, the other girls..it was fun.

Campfires, tunes, potato salad, the times we did that on holidays. The few times I’d gone canoeing.

Then dreams of older me as a parent and husband.

A few times we went ay campgrounds because it was easier but they still had seen it as an adventure.

Making smores.

Even camping one time in the living room with them.

I love them, I miss them too, I hate that my life was so bittersweet in so many memories.

Then those dreams shift and change and it becomes something else.

Shaya and I together.

Doing things that are dreamlike.

Flying through this place of islands floating in the sky with towns and castles on them and even forests and mountains on some of them.

We’re listening to music from home and she’s sharing an MP-3 player with me.

We’re flying through islands and these smaller fragments of them like from that Avatar movie and we’re listening to Fly by Sugar Ray.

Then we’re home, we’re someplace we’re calling home and it’s snowing out and we have a Christmas tree and she’s gasping at every box of ornaments that she opens to put up on the tree. I’m making Christmas cooking with the house smelling of so many things from all the baking that I’m doing.

And then we’re in N’Orleans and it’s not mardi gras or anything but this little diner out by the 610 to the 10 heading to Kenner.

It’s raining and the truck is outside and Bhlaze is painted down along the trailer and I’m taking her here because this is one of my places I always stop at because they always have the best gumbo here with the sausage cooked to this deep crisp and the chicken thighs just melt and the shrimp you can tell they got in that morning and you get deep fried okra there as the croutons.

They don’t have anything like that here.

The closest things are this Ajanian type of stews.

And the dream shifted from there to Ajania one of the other moons and it’s the home moon of what my brain is calling africanized elves.

We’re flying on Bhlaze’s back as we soar over Savannah and woods but not the jungle woods but this other kind of forest where there are Acacia trees the size of those big old southern oaks.

My heart hurts and races at the same time as I see a place like Africa home if it was never pillaged.

Shaya says in the dream feeling it. “It was, The C’thull turned this place into a hell Wren, it was slaves on top of slaves and what wasn’t the strip mines it was farms for them to sell off in their markets.”

“Africa home is beautiful too from things that I’ve seen but nothing came back like here...because we are the C’thull.”

We sail over herds of animals and some are just like from home. Some I think are extinct or close to it here and we ended up sailing out over this river for miles until we came to a Delta and there was a small fleet of boats all around these large barges, the barges were like villages and ports both?

We landed on one and we had this stew of hellfire like sauce with crayfish in it and these little silver dollar sized pink crabs you could eat with the shells and there was bits of goat chops instead of the chicken in gumbo and they had their own kind of sausage.

But the spices, this pepper stuff in there was hotter than anything I was used to and I’m sure it was from the link and Shaya’s memories.

She took some honey from a spoon in a jar on the table and licked it and she kissed me to save me from the heat.

We woke up after that dream and kissing like we had done in the dream.

She tasted in this lingering way of deep dark honey and spice.

Bhlaze had nudged us mentally.

~You wanted this hour Shaya.~

“Thank you, definitely.”

She added more charcoal from a bag to the embers of our fire and she filled a kettle and pot and she made hot tea for both of us and porridge and we sat together eating after getting dressed and watched the world change as the sun rose.

Oh my god.

It’s sunrise from a height over an alien world and there are still three of the moons brightly visible and large in the sky when the sun comes up.

I cry happily as I’m watching it with my tea and Shaya’s drinking in my amazement.

Seeing her world through my eyes.

We took our time doing that before we began to train and practice again pulling power into me and my body towards using the memory charm on my reflexes, to push myself harder.

And it’s not easy training at all with the hand to hand form she’s showing me called Jarorin or with my sword work.

We do this for hours and hours and hours before the sun seems like it’s moved into mid morning.

Shaya is a skinny girl a literal elfin waif.

Uh-huh yeah, you know this wire hard skinny people that hit you and it feels like all bone?

That’s her.

All princess, knight, dragonrider serious beating my butt all over camp with this thing that’s like Sylvan Tae-Kwon-Kick-Ryu and then there’s the sword work.

Where my princess swings so fast that velocity becomes strength.

And I’m softer than I used to be.

But somewhere in that transformation I still have all of “Bear” it’s like it all got sucked into me with the magic so I have all that strength that I had.

Actually I think I’m stronger with two good legs and nothing wrong with me like heart problems or being diabetic.

And I’m faster too.

It’s just sort of getting to warrior, fighter, brawler as a woman in my head versus all of the other stuff that my brain knew or more like wanted for me to be.

As the sparring goes on I’m getting more and more warmed up into it and I am going on more of the old instincts and things I used to do. Lots of real life fights and lots of scuffles usually helping other people and a little american football and some wrestling both high school stuff that I actually did in school and some of the TV stuff that I added into things I did while in fights.

I score a few hits, back and I’m actually good at the back elbow move.

Lots of people think they can take you down if they get behind you. I’m really practiced at not letting people outflank me like that.

They don’t fight like that here.

And they don’t use the uppercut much either.

I stopped after I sent Shaya off her feet with the uppercut after the elbow and slid to her side feeling her reeling from the stun.

I felt deep into her to see if she was okay.

She could feel me enough through the dizziness to sit up and find my lips with hers and she kissed me until her head stopped spinning.

“I”m fine, that...that’s a good move, we don’t do a lot of that here.”

I sigh with relief.

“I know, your moves are all fast stuff, deadly and sort of like Bruce Lee.”

“Bruce Lee?”

We get up and start getting cleaned off and then dressed to leave and I’m telling her of what I know about Bruce Lee, who he was and the little bit I know about his whole Jeet Kune Do martial art that he made.

Shaya returns the favor quite fascinated with what she knows of Kyu-nari.

The Silvan sort of Asian Moon realm and one of the reasons why it’s not a unified kingdom but a republic.

Kyu-nari is ruled by an Empress.

An empress Jocelyn Moondragon who is powerful in her own ways as Shaya’s parents are mystically and maybe more so but she’s a sort of odd xenophobe that is all for her moon and her people politically and economically but she seldom ever leaves and outsiders are frequently kept under watch.

Really it sounds like Imperial Japan had a kid with Maoist China and oddly ultra hardline feminism as she has a harem of men and only her female children have been kept.

At first that sounds messed up but Shaya explains that Jocelyn has only girls for the most part and of the two princes that were were both were assassinated.

And there’s this whole subsets of warlords and parties and contingents that want her dead and want her children dead.

That there are people that think that if there is an Emperor of her line that’s survives to take the throne that it will pull in those in line that oppose Jocelynn because she’s a woman.

And Kyu-Nari is a financial power too as they produce almost all of the rice consumed by the silvans as well as medicine, fruit, and a huge list of other things that no one else does here so a lot of outside parties are interested in the fall of a woman that holds the planet in there dainty pale fist.

I tell her as we break camp carefully so as not to leave any hazards about China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam which isn’t much because I was never one of those Asian obsessed people.

I do know some more about North American Asians since I have spent a lot of time delivering things to those neighborhoods. Sadly it’s mostly food stuff. But she’s intrigued at ideas like egg rolls, wontons and fortune cookies since she’s never had them and she’s pretty sure they don’t exist here or things like bubble tea.

We fly out from camp and we do circles and Shaya does some combat magic with farsight magic. God the feeling is weird since I’m included and it is like mental zooming in. I guess the idea is that the spell makes adjusting lens like filters that we look through.

We can see miles away in good detail.

Humans...Earth governments would kill for a Silvan combat mage.

Advanced senses compared to a human, low light vision naturally, farsight without tech and the training and everything else.

And it’s an easy spell to learn, one of their basics so while we scout and fly and glide both she and Bhlaze teach it to me.

I’m still amazed at how in learning how to use my energies like they do that I can do magic at all.

I’ll never really be a mage, I mean I have my ramming “Freightliner” spell but that’s a lot closer to an ability. It’s like wild magic something I know so well that I can make it happen.

Academically it’s a nightmare because none of the force is channeled accurately, it wastes power and that effects use and range and all of these other things.

Spells are like programs or stuff like that. I know now some computer tricks and things but I’m not a programmer or a code writer.

Still though I live a life where I can do magic.

Me…

The scouting is interesting too.

The Darklands are their own ecosystem really it’s where the C’Thull central starbase and slaver areas were placed. It’s a continent sized place too with all these leftover dangerous being and life forms and leftovers from the war with them and it was made home by those Forsaken assholes from The Civil War called The Summoning War where things were pulled through by magic from other places to here.

It reminds me at least here of a Utah, Colorado with the rock formations and bluffs and even mountains here and there are forests here that look very untouched by any kind of formal industry. Even with the alien plants here that I see like near black needled spruce trees and a maple that looks like it’s that blue you seen in dark navy leather it’s still sort of familiar.

At the same time...With things that Shaya told me...it’s an active version of like Silvan Australia size and all with hostile races like mercs working for terror groups back home all fighting around the remains of a war zone that left dealy tech and things behind in the countryside like both sides did at Nam.

And that’s not including Lyam is out here somewhere.

And all of his allies and traitors.

And likely a thousand more things too big to cover without just living it.

We see trail sign, things likely from the base and checking them out with landing and Shaya’s skills and her teaching me and Bhlaze using his taste of smell this isn’t recent traffic but leftover trail sign from the fortress.

I can feel her and Bhlaze know at some times we have eyes on us but nothing happens.

I do ask when we mount back up and fly again.

“We’re being watched?”

“Definitely and maybe not by Lyam’s forces but just by other things, there are a lot of other things Wren.”

“And we don’t engage?”

“Some of the life here isn’t friendly or even just not safe for the sylvan people but it’s not like they are outright enemies here either. Unless it’s a known enemy here I go with a careful and cautious neutral.”

“Mercy and forbearance?”

“I am a knight as much as I am a rider.”

“So do you use a lance?”

“On horseback yes.”

“Not on Dragonback?”

“That’s a wondertale. Uhm fiction or fantasy from your perspective it’s never been practical, the most realistic weapon from dragonback is a blaster rifle and after that a blaster or bows and even then riding while aiming is hard.”

I chuckle. “That makes sense it’s not what I thought though.”

“Even with our own most people don’t get that there are lots of tales and stories our biggest work on dragonback is actually mystical defence with shields and being a linked other set of eyes.”

Bhlaze adds in. ~Plus a mystical booster in varying ways we amplify each other.~

We bank and start a new patrol track and then another and another going through the circle we first flew out and around and tightening the loop.

I’ve hunted some a little but nothing as serious and defined like this.

When we get back we can make out that the ways to the fortress have been blocked off and there are earthworks and palisades up and even a few finished stone walls?

That has to be magic but we’re holding the place for sure and there’s no mistaking the Sylvan army presence here especially with the flags that are out and flying in several places.

We get back and land in the now cleared airship hangar with people busy working at repairing the ship and they’re all Rafe’s people.

He has this look of serious arrogance on his face and I see Ilisa there and she’s healing Kyte who looks battered even more.

Shaya slides off of Bhlaze from the front down over his face like she fell/walked on purpose and kept walking in that pissed off Legolas grace and she’s matched by Bhlaze growling as well at the same time.

I slip off sideways thankful that I do so gracefully enough to look normal.

Shaya demands. “What happened here.”

Ilisa says dryly. “Commander Kyte and Commander Rafe had a difference of opinion in who was in command.”

Shaya looks at him. “I specifically left Kyte in command.”

He stares back. “And I outrank her.”

“AT home, AT Skywood not here and not over the orders I left.”

“My mistake, I thought that it was fine seeing as many of the troops and the men followed my orders as I gave them.”

“And why is she hurt?”

“Because we had an honour duel and she lost.”

I look at Kyte and she’s red faced and she’s fighting really hard not to look miserable and bullied and my heart goes out to her because she reminds me of one of my kids.

“What was the fight over?”

“Duel if this had been a fight everything would have been much different.”

Shaya growls and she sounded bigger than she is like part of Bhlaze’s growl came out of her. “Duel then, why was there even one.”

“My Little sister thought that she could order myself and my men.”

“I left her in command.”

“And that only works with republic forces not those of houses.”

“That’s splitting hairs and you know it.”

“That’s the law rider, one that you are sworn to abide by. Expected co-operation isn’t enforceable.”

Shaya looks like she might get a little too pissed off right now and well to me...this guy might be a knight and have a command but he’s just another rich douchebag, he might be of noble blood but he talks like a shifty politician.

I walk over and put my arm on Shaya’s shoulder.

She so fits herself. Dark and gothic, broody sometimes, likely too much and with so much passion too. Plus she’s bonded to a lightning dragon.

I look at him and I give him the same look I reserve for those types of folks that disgust me like the really sexist pigs or those people of faith passing or hate literature or racists like the Klan.

Y’know the not only did I step in something but some leaked into my shoe look.

“I’m pretty sure that you know the difference Rafe.”

“You do not get to be so familiar with me.”

“Oh? Why? I’m not one of your subjects or vassals I’m a free woman and currently only beholden to myself and my bonded.”

“You should watch your manners.”

“Likewise Rafe, obviously you didn’t care for those when you tossed yours aside as an excuse to sully your sister. How many hundreds of years old are you and you tarnish her, your command, your men, your house by being some petty jackass.”

He steps forward to glare at me and I channel all the pissed off ladies I’ve ever known that acted just like him.

Hell I channel my grandmother when she was dealing with men like him.

I draw myself up and I literally let the generations of the women in my blood wake up and I stare him down in that way that we do as women when we’re done.

Just done with their bullshit and not afraid of them either.

He stops in his tracks and he looks flustered.

He won’t or can’t look me in the eyes.

I keep staring at him.

He looks at me with a glance and at Shaya and he looks like he might say something and Bhlaze cuts that off with a growl and then he looks at Kyte and Ilisia sort of looks back and her staff floats from the ground to her palm like a Harry Potter broom.

Something there says he backed off from The Loremistress earlier.

Rafe growls something I don’t recognize but spins on his heel and storms off to his men and starts shouting orders for them. “Stop working on that airship we have no obligation here we’re leaving!”

Shaya’s staring at me...I can sort of feel her feeling me.

As he’s leaving I tilt my head watching him go. “Well as much as things are different they’re still the same. Give some preppy jackass their comeuppance and they through a fit and they flounce.”

Shaya breaks into a giggle as does Ilisia as she says. “Flounce I like that word.”

I laugh. “Extra points for using comeuppance in a sentence?”

She laughs. “Definitely. I enjoyed that. He’s an asshole.”

I laugh and others are staring at the Loremistress like they don’t thing that clergy swear.

Rafe hears us laughing and he’s distracted enough that he missed the Folding side stairs for his airship and he trips. Which he follows up with this fast sprawl up them and trying to act like it never happened at all when he is on the deck.

And yeah it was funny, and we laughed as well as a few others.

Since far from everyone here is beholden to him or his family.

I look over at Kyte. “You okay?”

She has tears in her eyes. “No…” (Sniffle.) “How can I fight you after this?”

I look at her. “By the rules, literally when we do this we have a match by all of the rules of sword work and courts and things and we give them the best fight that they have ever seen….and then we top it off by being friends.”

She gets up and she limps over and she hugs me tight.

“With honor.”

I hug her back. “With honor.”