Tell Me A Story [Rhaedalyn]

R’nya’s gaze shifted ot the little firelizard as he realised Rhaedalyn’s pause was because of the creature, and he blinked at Rumour and then tilted his head. The little critter really was not bothering him all that much, but seeing him happily curl up in Rhaedalyn’s lap and fall asleep, R’nya could not say he would be terribly upset by being left alone by him, either. The firelizards that the girl was bonded to were quite lovely, but they were definitely a handful, too. Then again, so was Aradissicath, so he supposed it should only be true that the three tiny dragons should be as well. Rhaedalyn was perhaps the easiest of the bunch to deal with on a daily basis, and R’nya wondered mildly how she did not go insane with all of them buzzing around in her mind every day. Probably the same way he managed to put up with Xyreith, though R’nya could not imagine having firelizards on top of the great bronze lump.

Xyreith snorted, though he was not paying nearly enough attention to his rider to aim the action at him; rather he was amused by Aradissicath’s taunting invitation. Rising easily to his feet, Xyreith was genuinely careful not to send sand, mud, dirt, rocks or any other substance spraying all over the humans as he turned more on his hind legs than in a true circle, wings half extended to balance himself, and then trotted down to where Aradissicath was edging into the water. Cold? Considering how often he found himself flashing between, the dragon was highly amused by such a concept – but then, he wasn’t even sure Aradissicath had ever actually been on a trip between. Certainly she had never done so in any memory that he could recall, and Xyreith paused with a blink before shaking the thought away and lowering his nose into the water. A breath was expelled, before he lifted his head swiftly and powerfully, spraying a wave of water towards his golden companion. He rumbled with smug amusement at his own antics and waited for retaliation.

While unsure where Rhaedalyn could possibly have come up with such a subject for her fantasy, R’nya was none the less entirely caught up in her tale, pale eyes caught solely on the young woman’s face. He’d shifted to lay on his side when Rhaedalyn scooped up Rumour, an elbow planted firmly and his hand cradling his head as he watched her, the other picking at the little tufts of grass that were growing in the sandy dirt of the lake’s edge.  A half smile stole R’nya’s lips as the mystery suitor turned out to be a dragonrider that appeared to save the fair maiden, pale eyes sparkling with amusement and approval. It was, of course, only fitting that a dragonrider should be the one to save the day!

Caught up in the story as he was, R’nya didn’t fail to note the lack of a given dragon’s colour. Part of him wondered if it was supposed to be obvious – everyone who was anyone romanticised the bronze dragon – but there was a quieter, not quite so nice part that pointed out quite snidely that the young maiden in Rhaedalyn’s story was likely to have found her prince charming in the form of a bluerider. When the lopping of locks came up, R’nya decided that was quite probably the case, for what other colour would Rhaedalyn romanticise? Bronzeriders were a required part of her lifestyle; blueriders were far more free to fill any kind of voice.

Managing not to frown or scowl only because he was good at controlling his expressions, R’nya’s half smile still lingered on his lips as he reached out gently with the hand not holding his head out of the dirt, and gave a curly lock a gentle tug. “There is freedom, in losing the locks,” Or at least, that was what his Weyrlingmaster had told the sobbing hodlerbred boys who had been ordered to lop off their shoulder length hair. R’nya had personally never had his hair any longer than a shaggy cut around his ears, and that was mostly because he was about due to bug someone to cut it for him. (He’d stopped cutting it himself when Katila had been founded).