Chapter One Hundred and Eleven - Seize the Date

It was during breakfast--the inn had a nice serving of ‘bun acceptable’ foods, which mostly meant that I got a plate full of fruits and some still-warm pastries (no eggs!) to munch on while the others chowed down on sausages and such--that the thought hit me.

“Ah, we didn’t tell Rhawrexdee when to meet, did we?” I asked.

“Who is that?” Booksie asked.

“Oh, that’s the dragon. We’re supposed to meet him today,” I explained.

Booksie nodded. “Ah, yes, the dragon. Did you want help with that?”

I brightened. “We’d love help! What do you know about romance?”

The bun flushed. “I might have read a book or two. And I’ve been on my share of dates and such. I never did find someone that was just right for me though.”

I reached over and patted her head. “Then we’d love your help! I’ve never really been on a date and, um.” I looked towards Amaryllis, the question obvious in my eyes.

“Don’t look at me that way, you daft moron,” Amaryllis said. “I don’t think harpy-dating customs would apply in this sort of situation, regardless of if I did or did not date anyone before.”

“But you didn’t?” I asked.

She turned her head away from me, stabbed a sausage with the tip of a talon, then tore a bite out of it.

“Awa, I, I’ve been on dates before.”

Amaryllis choked on her sausage.

Awen wilted under our combined stares. Even Orange was looking at her weird. “Aw-awa, it was only a few times?” she shrank deeper into her seat. “Um. With some noblemen, and, and with some chaperones. Nothing untoward happened.”

I shifted my seat so that I was a little closer and grabbed her hands. “Tell us! Was it romantic? Did you kiss anyone? Did the boys have nice chins?”

Awen shook her head. “It wasn’t that nice. We just walked around and they bought me some things that I didn’t really want, and sometimes, when the chaperones were busy, they would get handsy. I didn’t enjoy it at all.”

“You poor thing,” I said.

“Perhaps I’ve been fortunate,” Booksie said. She was tapping a bit of lettuce contemplatively against her chin. “My first dates were... mixed, but some of the later ones were fun. I was a little older though. This was a few years before I left for Port Royal.”

“They went well?” I asked. “How come?”

“Ah, the boys were nice. We didn’t have too much in common unfortunately, but they were attractive. I can’t really pin what made them fun or not. Sorry. Waking up somewhere different the next morning is always awkward though.”

A terribly inappropriate giggle escaped me at the same time as Awen gasped. Amaryllis just rolled her eyes, but her blasé attitude couldn’t hide her blush.

The sudden screaming and yelling and general sounds of panic from outside had us all bolting to our feet.

I picked up my shovel and pack and shot out of the door after my friends who were stumbling down the corridors of the inn. We burst out onto a street where people were running. It was easy enough to guess where Rhawrexdee had landed. We just needed to wade through the crowds moving in the opposite direction.

The closer we got the centre of town, the fewer people there were. Only a few very brave guards remained, the armour over their legs clanking together with fright.

We slipped past a rough formation of them and stepped onto the town square. Judging by the half-deconstructed scaffolding and the lack of a stage, the people in charge of yesterday’s festival had been hard at work taking things apart.

That would be complicated somewhat, I imagined, by the dragon currently flattening one of the stages.

Rhawrexdee was still as grand and formidable as when I had first laid eyes on him. More, maybe. His scales seemed freshly cleaned. Maybe he’d taken a dip in the ocean? His cart-sized head turned towards us and his lips peeled back to show off twin rows of glistening crocodile teeth. “Ah, you arrive at last. I was afraid that I’d need to start destroying parts of this town until you scurry out.”

I felt Awen and Amaryllis slip behind me, and Booksie was rooted to the spot, ears ramrod straight above her head. “Hello Rhawrexdee!” I called out. “We weren’t sure when to expect you, so we were having breakfast at the inn while we waited.”

The dragon tilted his head to the side. “Fair enough, I suppose. I myself despise skipping breakfast. A sheep a day keeps the teeth white and so on.”

I nodded along. “Sure. I’m glad you showed up.”

“I am nothing if not punctual, and also a dragon.” He shifted, long neck moving sinuously like the snake preparing to strike so that I had to look up to meet his eyes. “Now, I am certain you spent the last few days preparing to teach me how to court...” he glanced to my right where Amaryllis was standing. “Beautiful princess-y maidens?”

I worked to keep my smile on. “Yup. We’ve been doing, ah, nothing but work on that. This entire time.”

“Excellent,” he said.

Oh, good, he was gullible and I wasn’t going to be eaten.

“Yuuuup. We just need to, um, talk. Over there. For a moment. Hey, do you speak the local tongue?”

“I do not,” Rhawrexdee said. “Though my mother did make me take lessons to learn ancient Pyrowalkian. We do need to keep to some of the older ways, after all.”

“Brilliant!” I said as I grabbed onto my friends and dragged them off to the side. We stopped next to a neat pile of lumber. “We need a plan.”

“Awa, we could run?”

I shook my head. “He can fly.”

Booksie raised a trembling hand. “May I ask... what exactly is going on?”

I swallowed. “Well, see, it goes something like this. That nice blue dragon over there wants to either learn how to convince princesses to go out with him, or he wants to eat people and take all of their gold. So, we just need to, um, teach him how to date princesses.”

“Ah,” Booksie said. She turned to eye the dragon that was currently picking at what was no doubt some poor sheep’s innards stuck between his teeth. “And we can’t run?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Booksie took a deep breath to settle herself. “Well, we could try to teach him what he wants to know.”

“Loath as I am to agree, the bun is right. If the dragon leaves satisfied he can fly off to be someone else’s problem,” Amaryllis said.

“So, you’re volunteering to date him?” I asked.

Amaryllis squawked. “World no.”

“Then we’re in a bit of a pickle,” I said. Rhawrexdee didn’t seem like that bad a guy, once I looked past his tendency to eat cute fluffy sheep and also people. What he wanted wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary. Really, he just wanted to be loved, and that was perfectly okay. I wanted the same thing, though I was still waiting for the perfect person to show up before I started thinking about actual romance.

“Awa,” Awen said. “If, if we have to, then we should try our best. Um. Miss Booksie can maybe help? And we can coach the dragon on how to be nicer?”

I nodded. “That’s it. We just need someone, anyone, to act as his date.” I stared at Amaryllis.

She glared back. “You... you moronic, half-witted, cretinous, imbecile.... Fine!”

“You’ll do it?” I asked.

“That, or I’ll ask the dragon to eat you in exchange for the date.”

Grinning I swept Amaryllis into a quick hug. “Thank-you, thank-you!”

She shoved me off with a huff. “Thank me if I managed to talk us out of this mess.”

“Ah,” I said. “That might be a problem. He said he can only speak dragon and something called ancient Pyrowalkian.”

Booksie looked up, her ears perking. “He speaks Tanyintian?” she asked. At my confused look, she tried to clarify. “It’s an old, old dialect. Before the founding of the Pyrowalkian Empire there was a kingdom called Pyro. Before the Pyro family--for which the kingdom was named--came into power, the region that would become this kingdom was a part of a nation called Tanyint. It is said to have been the most powerful nation to ever exist, until it slowly fell apart over the course of a century or two. I think the dragons had an alliance of sorts with their ruling family.” Booksie scratched at her cheek. “Sorry. It’s just an interesting history. I can speak it a bit. There are a lot of older books on magic, especially enchanting, that used Tanyint script.”

I grinned. “Well, now you have an excuse to practice,” I said.

“Ah, I suppose. I don’t think the dragon is really into books or anything though.”

I paused. My friends were in this because we had kinda promised to help, and I had dragged them into the mess. It was my fault, but I had the best of friends, and they were there for me. Booksie, on the other hand, was a friend, but not as close a friend, and she didn’t deserve to be dragged into a heap of trouble. There was still plenty of time for her to run back home. “If you want to leave, because it’s safer, I can give you the gold I have? It might help?”

Booksie shook her head. “No! Please, dragons are very interesting, and the opportunity to talk to one shouldn’t be missed out.” She blinked. “Speaking of. Where did you learn how to speak dragon?”

“Ah.”

“Could you teach me, just a little?” There was a very worrisome fervor in her eyes. “There are some texts that have phonetic dragon writings in them. Just knowing what they’re about could increase their value by so much.”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I’m kind of a Riftwalker.”

Booksie was suddenly very close. “Truly?” she asked with the sort of tone someone used to tell a hated rival that they were in check. It was soft and husky and came out as a purr and I was scared.

“Awa, the dragon doesn’t look very, um, patient,” Awen said.

That snapped Booksie away. She ran her hands down the front of her sweater and coughed lightly to one side. “Yes well, I’m all for this plan, as long as it doesn’t prove too untenable.”

“Right!” I spun on a heel and strolled over to Rhawrexdee. “Heya! We’re all set,” I said.

“You are?” the dragon said.

I nodded. “We’re all set right?” I asked my friends.

“No, no we really aren’t.” Amaryllis said.

“See, they agree,” I said to Rhawrexdee. “So, today we’ll be going, uh, over the essentials of dating?”

Rhawrexdee snorted. “That hardly sounds practical.”

Once my hair resettled from being blown about by his snort, I took a moment to think about things. “Well, that’s because we want to make sure you’re ready for, uh, this afternoon's practice. A big, practice, not-real-at-all date. Totally fake.”

“You’re putting a suspicious amount of emphasis on the unreality of this date.”

“That’s because if it’s a fake date, if you make a little blunder it’s okay. Um. This is Booksie, one of my friends. She speaks ancient Pyrowalkian, a little, and she’ll be your teammate. Awen and I will be going ahead to, um, calm people down. And Amaryllis will be your date.”

Rhawrexdee perked up at that. “Truly?” he shifted to stare at Amaryllis who glared right back. “She doesn’t seem happy about it.”

“That’s... uh. She’s going to be playing hard to get. So that way you’ll learn how to get... that.”

“Hrmm, brilliant! And to think my sister said I should just eat you all and give up on the entire situation. Hah! Shows her!”

I smiled. “I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun.”

***