“Oh, yes, didn’t I mention?” Menolly pretended to be contrite. “We saw a queen mating, and I nearly lost Rocky and Diver to her. Beauty was furious.”
“Anything else that hasn’t been mentioned that I should know?”
Menolly grinned at him. “I need to have the old memory jogged by association. You’ll know what is needed when the time comes.”
Jaxom decided that two could play that word game and grinned back at her, before choosing a redfruit to eat. It was so warm that he set aside his riding jacket and helmet. Ruth continued to enjoy a leisurely and lengthy bath as Menolly’s firelizards performed alongside him, their combined show affording their indulgent audience considerable amusement.
It got hotter, the white sands reflecting the sun’s rays and baking the cove even where they were in shade. The clear water and the fun the beasts were having was too much for Jaxom to watch any longer. He unlaced his boots, wriggled out of his trousers, whipped off his shirt and raced for the water. Menolly was soon splashing beside him before he was a dragonlength from the shore.
“We’d better not take too much sun,” she told him. “I got a colossal burning the last time.” She grimaced in recollection. “Peeled like a tunnel snake.”
Ruth erupted beside them, blowing out water, all but swamping them with strokes from his wings, and then, solicitously extending a helping tail as the two choked and spluttered from the water they’d swallowed.
Menolly’s body was trimmer than Corana’s, Jaxom noticed as they waded out, happily exhausted by their swim with Ruth. She was longer in the leg and not nearly as rounded in the hip. A bit too flat in the breast, but she moved with a grace that fascinated Jaxom more than courtesy allowed. When he looked back, she had put on pants and overtunic, so that her slim bare arms were exposed to the sun as she dried her hair. He preferred long hair in a girl though, with all the dragonriding Menolly did, he could see why she’d keep it short enough to wear under a helmet.
They shared a yellow fruit which Jaxom had never eaten before. Its mild taste was well seasoned by the salt in his mouth.
Ruth emerged from the water, shaking water all over Jaxom and Menolly.
The sun is warm, he said when they complained of the shower. Your clothes will dry quickly. They always do at Keroon.
Jaxom shot a glance at Menolly but she evidently hadn’t caught the significance of the remark. She was resettling herself, disgusted by the wet sand that now speckled her clothes and bare arms.
“It’s not the wet that bothers,” Jaxom told Ruth, as he brushed his face before lying down again, “it’s the gritty sand.”
Ruth worked himself into a good wallow of dry sand and the firelizards, giving little tired cheeps, nestled down against him.
Jaxom thought that one of them should stay awake to see if local firelizards responded to the lure of the white dragon, but the combination of exercise, food, sun and the limpid air of the cove were too much.
Ruth’s soft call woke him. Do not move. We have visitors.
Jaxom was on his side, his head pillowed on his left hand. Opening his eyes slowly, he looked directly at Ruth’s shade-dappled body. He counted three bronze firelizards, four greens, two golds and a blue. None of them wore neck paint or bands. As he watched, a brown came gliding in to land by one of the golds. The two exchanged nose touches and then cocked their heads at Ruth’s head which was on the sand at their level. Ruth had the lids of one eye half-opened.
Beauty, who had been asleep on the other side of Ruth, minced carefully across the white dragon’s shoulders and returned the courtesies of the strangers.
“Ask them if they remember seeing a bronze dragon?” Jaxom thought to Ruth.
I have. They’re thinking about it. They like me. They’ve never seen anything like me before.
“Nor will again.” But Jaxom was amused at the delight in his dragon’s tone. Ruth did so like to be liked.