#us two

He was laid with Layali in their nest. Her slight form was curled against his in the pre dawn light, sleeping soundly as he was watching the wind chime. He liked that she slept so soundly. She said she used to sleep so horribly before, rarely getting a full night’s sleep, rarely sleeping without nightmares. But not with him. He had an arm around her shoulders as she cuddled against him, watching the sway of the bamboo and listening to the chime. He knew Jos was keeping watch a distance off with Green.

He sat up, still looking up when something started to move across the sky behind the leaves of the bamboo. It was a huge thing. Next to him Layali woke with a noise of complaint.

“Najaïr? What it is?” she muttered in Shingari, pulling on his arm. His ears perked when off in the distance he heard the high pitched thunder.

“Get up, c’mon,” he pulled her up.

“Whaaat?” she complained but did disturb their leaf and bamboo nest as she got to her feet, rubbing her eyes.

Using mostly his own magic and wing power he pulled her into the air. “You’ll see. C’mon,” he said urgently. Layali got her wings under her by the time they crested the bamboo tops.

Up this high dawn was more pronounced. The horizon was starting to lighten, the bamboo forest turning almost pink as a soft dawn peeked over the rising and falling mountains of the Ascent. “Look, look,” he pointed up and into the distance.

“Oh!” she cried. Out in the distance was a pod of sky whales. Three mothers with two calves and maybe a male. They played high up in the low hanging clouds, the young skimming against the bamboo to reach an itch they just couldn’t scratch. They were soft gray and green with curled and winding markings across their flanks with three sets of pectoral fins and short flukes meant more for speed that allowed them to swim quickly through the sky and clouds.

“C’mon, let’s go see,” and he grabbed her hand and started pulling her towards the pod. She didn’t fight him and when two Wind dragons wanted to fly somewhere they did so at speed. It took them moments to get closer to the pod.

The calves noticed them first and swam close to their gigantic mothers. But the mothers recognized them as the Windsinger’s children, same as they and were unbothered by the two small dragonoids flying between them. Even the babies were nearly as large as Najaïr had been before he’d taken on this form, their mothers truly massive next to them, larger than Imperials, larger than anything Najaïr had ever seen.

Layali let go of his hand to go closer to one of the calves. He just watched curiously and smiled when she coaxed it from the shadow of their mother. The calves were quicker than their mothers with greater dexterity and could almost keep with Layali’s casual flying but were very excited and keen to do so. Najaïr watched for a moment not really knowing what he was seeing. It took him far too long to realize she was playing with them. He hadn’t grown up playing with anyone else other than Kala and Jeddie and even that was never like this. He didn’t really know what play looked like. And now he saw Layali doing it and it felt like his hearts were much too large for his chest in a good way? He was a confusing feeling. He quickly flew over to her to play a chasing game with the calves.

Layali was more nimble in the air in this form than he was and didn’t just fly circles around the calves but him too. Watching how graceful she was made him smile. She looked so different from the girl he’d found on the Plateau bleeding from the nose. It made him happy seeing her like this, flying freely through the air, catching both his tail and the calves’ tails as she flitted around them. She made him dizzy and he didn’t want it to stop.

But it did have to come to an end. The pod was moving on. The mothers sang to their children as the sun broke above the low clouds, bathing them in glamorous golden sunlight, beckoning them away from the dragons to follow the pod. Layali called after them in Sinhgari and Najaïr smiled. Then she flew back to him and he felt his skin prickle all over like his scales were raising as she brushed against him.

“That was fun,” she said.

Najaïr’s mouth worked a moment, caught off guard with being asked to speak. “Y-yeah,” he blurted out, feeling really stupid.

“Do you want to go after them?” she asked him, stopping to hover next to him, her butterfly patterned wings barely moving.

“I think Bonten would wonder where I went,” he said.

She shrugged, “I guess,” she said.

“But if you wanted to-- I’d go anywhere with you,” he blurted out.

She giggled. “That’s sweet,” she said. “But we shouldn’t make the “Shard Chosen” any more cranky than he already is,” she snickered.

“Right,” he said. “We could stay out here a little longer,” he said.

She flew a bit closer to him, the clouds beneath them turning the color of white gold. “That’d be nice. I like it when it’s just the two of us. No Snakes. No Bonten,” she curled her rosette patterned tail around his and Najaïr felt both his hearts pounding like crazy in his chest.

“Me too,” he said. They were closer now than dragons could usually get. Only because they were both so skilled at Wind magic could they get within touching range without needing to move forward.

“Najaïr,” she said, sort of looking at the clouds, sort of at him. He was only looking at her. “You know,” she tapped her lips thoughtfully, “There’s a thing my old clan would do- well, the couples anyway,” and he sort of stopped hearing for a moment. All he could hear was the pounding of his hearts. He was able to hear properly after a few seconds, “”Have you heard of such things?”

“I’ll be honest,” he said, “I didn’t hear a thing you said.”

“What?” she seemed hurt.

He grabbed her hand, which surprised her, and pulled her as close as their big wings could accommodate and keep up their slow beats. He put her hand against his chest and she could feel the furious beating of his hearts through his thin skin. “I can barely hear you over the sound of my hearts,” he said softly, the second one only started beating like this when I met you.”

Her face softened. She took her hand off his chest and instead put his hand on her chest. “Mine too,” she said and he could feel the pounding of her hearts in her chest, making her soft, brown, skin thrum under his fingers. He smiled slightly.

“They’ve never done that before,” he said, licking his lips.

“No?”

“No.”

She smiled softly, “You know why?”

“You know why?” he asked, green eyes getting big. She sort of giggled.

“So what I was saying before,” she said. “It’s something those in my old clan did when they found someone who made their body do things they weren’t expecting.” He nodded, he wanted to know. “Just, this,” and she carefully pressed her lips against his. It was a funny feeling but he liked it immediately. He didn’t know what it was but it felt great and he was sure he wanted to do that again even as she pulled away.

“Oh,” he said.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

“I think one; we shouldn’t tell Bonten about that at all or he’d get real mad,” he said in a sort of staccato sing song tone that made her laugh. “And two; we should definitely do that again,” he continued in the same verse.

She just laughed again, “You’re lucky I like you or I’d say no after that silly voice you just used,” she said and cupped his jaw with both hands and pressed her lips against his again. It felt so nice he forgot to keep beating his wings and they started to fall towards the earth.