Everlyn can’t lie in bed anymore. She opens the shutters in her room and the common room and watches Jeryon lead the wyrm around the pond. They wave to each other. For the first time, it strikes her: He’ll really be able to ride Gray. They’re so easy together.
He looks ridiculous in his new clothes, of course, like someone going to a masquerade as a dragon. She shouldn’t mock, though. She’s shortened her smock considerably and taken off much of the sleeves to use the fabric to fix the rest. Her undergarments are a ruin. Going without them, though, even if he didn’t know, is entirely out of the question. Beetles get everywhere.
She joins them as they pass the cabin and walks with them to the pond’s outlet stream.
“Tea?” he says.
“Shouldn’t be more than a moment,” she says.
He loves her tea, especially when she puts a shega jewel in it. Who would have thought that tea would be what could please him? He once told her he didn’t think he deserved cooked water.
The wyrm flaps and screeches, “Eeee!”
“None for you,” the poth says.
A bird flies by, and the wyrm leaps toward it. Jeryon checks her, and they watch it disappear into the canopy. He gets a look in his eye and says to Gray, “I know a game we could play, but we’ll need more crab.”
“What is it?” Everlyn says. She relishes that too rare look in his eye. The dragon has a rambunctious effect.
“You’ll see,” he says and hands her the lead. “Back in a minute.” He retrieves an empty crate and hurries downstream to the flats.
Everlyn gets a look in her eye. She waits until he disappears, then whistles twice. Gray sits and licks her. Slowly she straddles the wyrm and puts a little weight on Gray’s shoulders. Her tiny dorsal spikes are blunted by her smock. She’s like a rocking horse, the poth thinks. She settles herself. Gray pushes up. So much poise, the poth thinks, as if she’s already in flight. Everlyn lifts her heels off the ground. She lifts her toes. Gray flips out her wings and takes a step. Everlyn smiles and rolls with her. She always had a good seat. Then the dragon flaps, lifts, and topples the poth. She lands hard on her back, and Gray licks her face.
They have a long way to go.
When Jeryon returns to the cabin, the poth is steeping and Gray is sitting on the roof. He can’t decide if he loves her tea because of the steeping or in spite of it. It’s a whole operation, putting leaves in hot water and staring at them, as complex as refitting a galley. First the water has to be boiling, not a bit below or it’s ruined. Then you have to pour the water in slowly. Too fast, and it’s ruined. Then you have to wait a precise number of seconds. Too few or too many, ruined. Pouring the tea out is a whole other operation. That precision appeals to him tremendously. It’s not the type of attitude he’d have expected of her. Trouble is, he wants the tea now.
He whistles twice and Gray glides down to sit beside the crate. He grabs a crab between its back legs, extends his arm twice slowly, her eyes following the crab, then he flings it, spinning, high in the air. He whistles three times.
The wyrm leaps into the air after it. The crab tips off her snout and falls to the ground. Before it can get away, Gray picks it up with her mouth. And before she can chomp it, Jeryon whistles twice. She brings it to him for another throw. The crab is completely uninterested in flight. The next time, Gray relieves it of all interests.
He doesn’t know what it is about her, but the poth makes him puckish sometimes. It’s probably the tea.
Everlyn hears the wyrm whoosh and bang into the cabin. After a particularly solid strike, she leaves her tea, but not her count of how long it’s been steeping, to find out what they’re doing.
Jeryon makes the catches increasingly difficult by tossing the crabs near branches and close to the cabin. After one throw he watches the poth through a window. Her lips count off every tenth second. She gathers her hair and twists it behind her neck. I’ll make her a comb, he thinks. Three tines. He’ll inlay each with a piece of polished shell.
Gray sits beside him. He throws a crab near the cabin. Her angle to it causes her to clip a corner column. She squeals and flexes her wing. While she retrieves the missed crab, the poth appears in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“Crab Skeet. Watch this.”
He flings the crab toward the porch rail, and maybe because he’s trying to impress her he gets his whole arm into it. The crab flies high and long. Gray gets a good jump, but has to slow to avoid hitting the rail. The wyrm doesn’t want to miss in front of the poth, so she rears her head to snap it forward to make up the last bit of distance. She drops her jaw to give her the best chance of catching the crab. And as the crab falls nearly into the poth’s hands the wyrm reaches out with her very breath to snatch it, blasting the crab, the poth, and the cabin with a long gout of flame.