Sometimes I Write Things

“Go away,” she grumbled, “And don’t call me Reux.” She tucked her head further under her wing, and sighed. Temeraire crept closer, “You don’t mind it when Laurence calls you Reux, I don’t see why-”

“Laurence isn’t HERE!” Genereux nearly roared the end, her head whipped up, ruff unfurled, and her plaintive pale blue eyes fixed glaring at her brother. “It’s just the two of us and we don’t know where he is or how he’s doing or if he’s even alive. And we’re supposed to go about our days like everything is fine and normal and dandy and even try to mate with dragons we know nothing about and have never even talked to when our captain, our friend, is also out there alone, by himself, with who only knows what happening to him. I swear to the skies above if anyone has harmed him-” Genereux cut herself off sharply and slumped, hunching her shoulders and drawing her forelegs closer to herself. 

Temeraire took the last few steps and closed the difference between himself and his twin, placing his head comfortingly on her back. It had not escaped his notice that this was the longest amount of time they’d spent away from each other, and from Laurence. “I do miss him too, you know,” Temeraire murmured, “But he did tell us to wait for him, remember? We are to wait here, and if we do not hear from him in two months’ time then we may take action. I know that two months is so very long. It has already been very long since we last saw Laurence, and we do not even know if he is alright. He has been taken from us, and we are not to do anything about it but wait.” Temeraire’s tail thrashed in agitation, striking the wall of Genereux’s cave, knocking a few stones loose and scaring some bats from their roost.

Genereux curled in on herself even tighter and mumbled almost incoherently, “I may have asked someone for word of Laurence.” 

Tereraire’s head whipped up to stare at his sister’s huddled form. “What?”

“There’s a little Winchester here, his name is Moncey, and apparently he has ways of sneaking into covets and asking around for information. I promised him a week’s worth of my dinners if he could only find out what had happened to Laurence for me. He said he’d be happy to do it, only he wasn’t sure that word of a human would travel around the covets. I only told him that it would be all the other dragons talked about, if another dragon’s captain had been hanged,” Genereux finished miserably, voice muffled, speaking almost into her foreleg now.

Temeraire understood now why Genereux hadn’t been coming to mealtimes, and internally berated himself for not having noticed sooner. “This Moncey fellow shall have some of my dinners as well. It does neither of us any good for you to be starving yourself.” Genereux raised her head indignantly at this affront, ready to protest when Temeraire cut in again, “If he comes back with news that Laurence is in danger, we both have to be in good condition to leave this place and rescue him. It will hardly do for only one of us to be able to go, especially if we could have prevented it by sharing this duty. Surely you must see the sense in that.”

Genereux relaxed slightly at that, acquiescing to her brother’s argument. She was ready to curl back in on herself when Temeraire gently nudged her with his snout. “Now if you’ll only come with me, if you please,” he started, getting up. He saw the question in her eyes before she asked it, “I seem to have made a mistake. My cave was very small when I first arrived, so I carved out some more room for myself and discovered there was a more spacious hidden cavern in the back. Only now it is too large and drafty for me to be in there by myself, and so you would be doing me a grand favor if you were to share it with me.”

Genereux paused, ready to refuse, when she saw this offer for what it truly was. Temeraire stood, not in the proud manner she was used to, but a little more rounded about the shoulders and droopy in his whiskers. She came to realize that he might be just as lonely as she felt, and she slowly rose to her feet.

“Only because you asked so very nicely,” she responded, “But if you take up more than half the space then rest assured I will be back here in my cozy cave on my own, and leave you to your musty, cold cavern by your lonesome.” She padded out of her cave before Temeraire who, stunned, took a moment before he loped after her, calling, “Well it is my cave after all, why should there be a problem if I take up more than half of it?”

The two of them bickered all the way back to Temeraire’s cave, secure in the presence of the other, that neither would let Laurence suffer too long on his own. For better or worse, they would face the coming days together. 

He looked at her sternly, “I will place you back on my shoulders, but only if you cease this business of crawling about my head. It is vastly improper, and I don’t quite see why either of you want to go about this pirating business when you seemed perfectly content this morning with your justly acquired breakfast of chicken and tunny.”

Genereux, looking only slightly abashed, looked away and allowed her legs to dangle in the air, while her brother still hollered away above. “It only sounds so much more fun to be a pirate. After all, hadn’t you won Temeraire and myself in a great battle with another ship? And then you got to keep us? What if we were able to find ourselves a ship to battle, and then we might find another egg, and hatch a human just for ourselves?”

Laurence adopted a feigned look of dismay, “Why on earth would you want another human? My dear, surely you cannot mean that you want to replace me with another?”

Genereux’s head reared back, stunned for a moment and she hastily replied “No, not at all! That isn’t to say that we want another human but an adventure, any adventure at all does sound appealing when we have spent these last many days at sea with not much to do except eat and sleep.”

Temeraire craned his head, noticing that Laurence and his sister were paying less attention to him, and had crept some ten feet down the rigging to better hear their conversation. “Yes, we are getting bored of just eating and sleeping. We want something better to do!”

Laurence turned his look of hurt up to Temeraire, who he was shocked to see was a shorter distance above his head than he’d expected. “Does this mean you don’t enjoy when I read to you? I thought you both found that activity pleasant enough.” Laurence had discovered early that, while the two dragonlings were not quite equipped to hold a quill and write out figures, they were more than content to rest on his shoulders and tuck themselves into the crook of his neck while he read to them.

Laurence saw Temeraire and Genereux exchange nervous glances at one another- neither wanted to relinquish their precious reading time with Laurence, but the idea of leading a pirate’s life was still plainly too exciting to give up so easily.

Riley silently appeared at Laurence’s side, sporting his newly acquired Captain’s garb and quirked an eyebrow at his friend and erstwhile superior officer. “Should I take this to mean that our new dragon friends are staging a coup on my ship?”

Temeraire bristled in the rigging and shot down another several feet, “We are not pigeons to be cooing, Captain Riley! We are dragons and we will have command of this ship! And shrimp!”

Riley barely concealed his mirth at the plain look of exasperation on Laurence’s face and schooled his own features into a stoic mask. “Of course,” he demurred, and held out an arm for Temeraire, “It is only you are both a bit small to man the helm at present, and I’m sure neither of you would be interested in so boring a job as steering the ship day in and day out. Or managing the logistics of the lot of the ship’s crew. Why not just leave that to us, and we can act on your direction?” Riley turned and arched a brow at Laurence, silently urging him to play along. 

Laurence, for all that he wanted to discourage his dragonlings from future bouts of misbehavior, was quite ready to have done with the present situation and acquiesced. “Yes, doesn’t that sound splendid? The duties of running a ship can be quite pedantic, and I do believe you both might find it a great deal more boring than you’d think.”

Genereux paused, calm enough that Laurence felt comfortable placing her gently on his shoulder. She hummed her assent at first, before she continued “When you lay the responsibilities out like that, it does sound to be pretty tedious. I would much rather be in charge without having to do all that. But I would still like extra shrimp with my dinner, if you please.” 

Temeraire, a little more skeptical, reached a forefoot out gingerly before climbing onto Riley’s still outstretched arm. “But only if it is as you say, and Genereux and I have say in the ongoings of the ship. We will only agree if the crew’s actions make sense for us!”

“Of course,” Riley agreed easily. He had no argument to give, as the Reliant’s mission had changed drastically once they had acquired a dragon egg that hatched not one but two dragonlings. The crew’s every action now was to get these two menaces, as he thought of them fondly, back to England so that they might be trained and perhaps even put into a formation. 

Satisfied, Temeraire gave a short nod, unfurled his wings and gave a short hop, gliding ungainly until he landed ungracefully on Laurence’s head, mussing his hair and nearly unseating Genereux.

Laurence, to his credit, was shocked but unmoved. Riley stood staring at them, eyes widened nearly comically. “They’ve never done that before, have they Laurence?”

“No, sir, they have not,” Laurence croaked, Temeraire still balancing atop his head. 

“It felt so very nice to try, though!” Temeraire crowed, and launched himself off Laurence’s head to glide to the helm. Genereux, not one to be left in her brother’s wake, tried her own luck, hopping off Laurence’s shoulder and landing, not quite smoothly, on the deck next to the helm. “That was quite fun” she called over to Laurence. Temeraire looked narrowly at the crewman standing at the helm. “Chart a course, if you please, straight on to England. I have heard that there are great big libraries there, and I would like to go,” he said primly, waiting for the crewman to disagree.

Upon seeing a sharp nod from Riley, the crewman gave a sharp nod of assent, “Just as you say, er- sir?” And Temeraire’s chest puffed out with delight.

He hopped down off the helm and glided to where his sister sat, and together they marched up and down the deck with much pomp and circumstance, convinced of their success.

Riley looked at Laurence, who looked back at the Captain with chagrin. “I do thank you for humoring them, but I do wonder what sort of trouble we’ve now gotten ourselves into, especially now that they’ve started trying to fly around,” Laurence murmured, not wanting his sharp-eared charges to overhear.

Riley merely shrugged, “I figure that it’s our prerogative to keep them entertained and satisfied anyhow, so it doesn’t much change our duties. Besides, I daresay this might get the crew to be more accustomed to your tiny terrors, and that can hardly be a bad thing.”

Riley clapped Laurence on the shoulder and, after noting that all was well on deck, headed back down below. Laurence looked on after him, and then turned to gather his charges. He strode after Temeraire and Genereux, calling for them to be careful at their gliding practice.

Perhaps he might distract them with the Principia Mathematica for a time, they might get so enmeshed they may even forget about the extra shrimp they requested with their dinner, and the sky might fall down around his ears. One could certainly dream. 

“I told you, Laurence will read us Principia FIRST, because anyone with half a brain knows that mathematics is more interesting than that Shakespeare’s fancy flowery words. Half of the words he uses aren’t even proper words! Anyhow, Hamlet is a dolt and I don’t see why he should have an entire play named after himself.” Temeraire turned his nose up at his sister, ignoring her tail whipping, agitated, back and forth.

“Laurence has already read us the Principia before and Shakespeare is a literary genius! If we have to listen to mathematics can’t we at least listen to something new and interesting? And Hamlet is NOT a dolt, you’re just uncultured.” Genereux huffed and looked away, not noticing until it was too late that her brother had launched himself at her. Together they tumbled off the hammock in a tangle of limbs and stained linen.

Laurence shot up out of his chair, only barely registering what sounded like the crunch of glass under his feet. He strode over to where his young charges were coiling angrily around one another, claws on soft snouts and tiny teeth clenched on tails and gently tried to peel them apart and disentangle them both from the now ruined, splotchy bedsheet.

“What exactly is the meaning of this?” Laurence only paused long enough to ask this of the two little dragons, still vibrating with anger, once he had separated them, one in each hand and just far enough from one another that they couldn’t reach the other with a swift swipe from a clawed foot. “Why are you two caterwauling around my cabin like yowling cats, and which of you is injured? This really is shameful behavior and I expected better from the both of you” he chided them.

Slightly cowed, Genereux protested “Temeraire started it! He said that you would only read Principia this evening because you liked him better and I was just a nuisance because you liked reading Principia better and you don’t like making the voices for Hamlet’s characters anyhow.” She snuffled quietly, slightly abashed, thrashing tail now drooping sadly.

Laurence looked at Temeraire sternly. “Have you been picking on your sister?” He looked at Genereux and stroked her soft hide with a thumb, cradling her gently, still holding the two dragonlings apart. “My dear, I care for you both very deeply, and very equally. I don’t mind reading Hamlet for you, nor do I mind doing the voices, but I must read either Principia or Hamlet first and yesterday we hardly had time for Principia before we lost the light and you both were asleep.”

“And you know how much I was looking forward to hearing it again, Reux! I had been waiting for it all day yesterday and we barely got to hear anything at all.” Temeraire huffed and turned away, “And what are you talking about Laurence? Neither of us is injured in the least. We were only play fighting, isn’t that at right Reux?”

Reux sniffed in disdain and looked away from Temeraire, Laurence confused over the both of them. “What do you mean neither of you is injured? There is blood everywhere! Only look! My linens, the floor-”

Laurence’s voice trailed off as his eyes fell on the broken glass on the floor by his writing desk. The twin dragons in his arms stiffened in surprise, then drooped. A shattered ink pot lay on the ground in a pool of black ink, splattered and irreverent on the hardwood floor. Little footprints around the obsidian puddle tracked across the room, little punctuations haphazardly stamped across his floor, his bedding, his dresser? In shock, he looked down at his charges and for the first time noticed the prominent black smear on his hand.

“Oh.”

“We’re sorry Laurence!” “Yes we ARE very sorry we were only just trying to determine which book we should read first this evening.” “We never wanted to make such a mess-” “No, and we can help clean it if you’d like,” Temeraire and Genereux strained against Laurence’s arms, trying to see his face and determine exactly how upset he was.

Laurence let out an ungentlemanly snort, exasperated. “My dears, you may yet have many skills, but I dare say that cleaning is likely not one of them. Pray let it be and just clean yourselves off- I can get this taken care of myself.” He let Genereux and Temeraire down softly on his chair after gently wiping their feet with his soiled bedsheet and began cleaning.

“Does this mean no reading tonight, Laurence?” Genereux keened sorrowfully from the chair, watching Laurence begin sweeping up the broken glass.