Kendra


     Janice stared down at the very soft, very inviting, very alien grasses that carpeted the Valley. She'd been here once, but in a fugue, quite different from this time. She'd been more inclined to ignore everything on the principal of its being a hallucination.

     ~Keep your shoes on!~ Kendra's voice cut in on her thoughts.

     Obviously not so much the hallucination. Janice blinked up at where her bondmate was fluttering, hanging impossibly in the air, tiny and brown and stripey. "I didn't take them off," she said quietly, turning back to the folliage.

     ~Yeah, sure. Don't pull that with me today, please? I don't want to come back and see you gone for the next ten days because my, that lump of moss really did seem quite lovely. Not your job. Not today.~

     Janice sighed and wound her scarves around her neck more tightly. She stuffed her gloved hands deeply in her coat pockets and swished her voluminous skirts towards the clearing, looking rather like a bag lady without the bag. She stared at the long line of males, seven in all, in various shades of blues and blacks, sporting all forms of features and sizes, as many of them were shrank before her very eyes, just to make things easier on the day's riser.

     Maybe she'd rather it be a strange hallucination, and she started shifting her glove off her hand when Kendra whipped around and glared straight at her.

     ~Don't you even think about it. I don't need one more thing to worry about while you're here, because Fate knows what you'll latch onto, and I can't take care of you right now, so please be careful with yourself, will you?~

     Janice sighed and stared at one of the dragons with fire for wings. "You, too, please?" she said quietly, staring awkwardly at the group. "I'll just... sit here." She found a nice tree to wait under and pulled idly at a strand of grass, tying it into strange designs, fingers awkward under her gloves. She watched as Kendra took a deep breath, felt her bondmate try to shrug everything off her mind, and stare into the sky, theoretically ready for anything.

     Janice decided now was a good time to close that window between them, just in case something happened that she didn't want to know about.

--

     Kendra took to the sky, opening up into a void of blue and white, leaving the grasses and the trees beneath her. In a mass, seven males rose to meet her, and she smiled to herself and started the merry chase.

     Or would have. She took a moment to glance over her shoulder, counting the males behind her to make sure she had them all. She did. And as she glanced forward, there was Gosshish Crimsonpanther, wings of fire, and flying straight towards her. Hey, no fair!

     Kendra cut sharply down, sweeping the treetops, gathering her needs, gathering her materials she'd surely need. So much for -- Hello! It appeared that someone had been taking notes. Specifically, a sized-down black and furry dragon - Lun'avr ty Driaten Alamyr if anyone else - was careening towards her. Kendra dropped like a stone under the canopy and juked left, clearing a path by bending the treelimbs upwards.

     Okay, so he was kind of cute, but it wouldn't be fair to be caught so quickly, would it? And why did she get the feeling she was hearing music of all things?

     She heard several sounds of collisions with the trees around her and ducked up, pulling gravel and scree with her as she caught her breath, grinning like a fool, and waiting for a moment as she insisted that she continued to hear music from somewhere. O-kaaaay... "Odd" didn't quite cover that.

     But nevermind, because she was starting to be seen. Vakil, who Kendra vaguely remembered seeing as patiently observing while he and others were changed to more accomodating sizes. But this didn't seem quite the same dragon, very keenly, very quietly keeping to the treetops, trying to stir up as little notice as possible and win the chase as quickly as possible.

     She might have let him, too, if she hadn't caught movement from the corner of her eye. Too still for too long, she reminded herself and swept upwards, followed by Vakil and the strange, saa-like Nosschaa glowing brightly and quite cheerfully arguing with Vakil over which of them would win. Vakil was... less cheerful, but far more entertaining.

     Kendra, though, was tiring and knew she had to make a choice as she led the chase down towards the trees again to somewhere far below the canopy, winding her way along and getting poor golden Apai Rutha temporarily stuck in a tree when she snapped its shape too quickly to stop him.

     But she kept hearing music, and this was going on too long. She was fairly certain she'd seen all of them, but her mind was racing as she avoided trees and pulled towards a cluster of worn-down, ruined houses and ruins from previous residents of the Valley. Gosshish was nearby again, having found her and teleported into range.

     Kendra did quick math and realized she still hadn't seen two of them, but then heard the strange music again. Distracted and determined to determine the source, she pulled hard on portions of the ruins and flew backwards, just to keep a better eye on things.

     Pushing her theoretical shield of stone away from her, expanding its reach as quickly as possible, she nearly clocked poor Nosschaa, and while Vakil and Gosshish evaded theirs with magic, Kendra continued flinging the heavy stones at all directions as she insisted she find the source of this increasingly frustrating volume of sound.

     She turned a corner of the ruins to see Mossamang Houten keeping pace with her, but on the safer side of the stone structures. Smart dragon, she decided, and pretty besides. Gold catching the light, fur fluttering in the wind as his feathered wings carried him on. Kendra turned and swept through the ruins, chasing him, when she heard the tiniest sounds of teleportation over Mossamang's musical strains.

     She grabbed a mindful of stone, sticks, and scree and flung it in the directions of the noise as she continued insistantly towards the fluffy white-and-gold-ish dragon. Getting breathless from all the hard work of flying and flinging and stopping and going, Kendra heard the three marks of teleportation as the dragons avoided her assault, but...

     She didn't begin to guess one would jump ahead of the stones. She hadn't actually seen Keromazon Mei'Ontainde until this point in the flight, as she was colliding with him and Mossamang, all three of them flying in a tangle of tangental velocity and bruised shoulders. Well what do you do with that, she wondered as they landed in a collective heap. She was too tired to have them duke it out in the air, and she really didn't want to put up with a fight right now...

     ~Okay, you caught me,~ she told the two of them. ~Can't be the first time this's happened. Sure it won't be the last.~



Kendra - SaaShiyovi Mossamang Houten - Mutt
Keromazon Mei'Ontainde - Supernal/Yautjadragon Hybrid
Apai Ruta - Whorling
Vakil - Whorling
Gosshish Crimsonpanther - Whorling
Nosschaa - Hybrid
Lun'avr ty Driaten Alamyr - Hybrid