Reina

Progenitor Reina, Clan Matriarch and Coliseum veteran, has evolved a great deal. Born a Fae, she consented to the breedchange to bring honor and wealth to the clan; trained to magecraft, she bowed her head to necessity and became a ferocious melee fighter, the better to destroy the clan's enemies. Naturally vain and self-absorbed, she has learned responsibility the hardest (and best) way, by taking on the needs of others. In this her natural inquisitiveness has served her well, inspiring her to watch over the lair's relationships, assess the mental and physical health of her clanmates, keep track of their pairings.

Reina's the one who goes to the dragon markets every week to trade things, to bring back valuables for the clan, and to seek out new clan members. After months of her leadership, she's the one everyone looks to first for help, advice or something to do. And in times of crisis, she has shown herself to be capable and decisive.

She has been training helpmeets: Hephaestus, as her administrative support, Cheimon, as her second in all other things, and Imbrius as the next Coliseum veteran. While no longer her mate, Argos remains her steadfast partner in everything else, and keeps her centered by reminding her of her origins as an ungened and distractable Fae.

Reina has seen the clan through so many crises, though some joy and far too much sorrow. The day she woke to the Windsinger's mark on her brow, she hid her face so that no one would see her weep... and then she went out among her brethren to accept their acclaim.

***

'What do you think?' Cheimon asked her, joining her at the bluff overlooking the ocean.

'I think I am a lot less confident about this move than I pretend,' Reina replied, crest feathers sagging. She managed a rueful smile. 'Hopefully it doesn't show.'

Cheimon sat neatly alongside the other skydancer, curling her tail over her feet. 'It doesn't. And you are more confident than you fear you are. The Windsinger spoke to you in dreams--why not? Didn't He mark you with his sign? And Cloudkeeper agrees... it's a good time to go.'

'But us!' Reina sighed. 'Why us! With all our problems? What kind of ambassadors do we make to another Flight? 'Join us in unity! Suffer disasters!''

Cheimon bumped her friend's shoulder with her nose. 'Stop that. We haven't had any calamity like that for seasons now. We prosper, Reina. Why not us? We have overcome all the adversity we've faced so far... thanks to you and Argos and Aspasia and Hephaestus--'

'And you?' Reina said, amused.

Cheimon's crest feathers flicked back in an excess of modesty, but she said, 'Well, and me. A little.'

Reina chuffed her laugh and nuzzled the other skydancer. 'You're good to me, and for me. Thank you for being so steadfast.'

'It's my pleasure.' Cheimon leaned on the other and together they watched the sun twinkle off the rippled backs of the waves. 'What do you think Earth Flight will be like?'

'I don't know. Dry, I'm guess.' Thinking of the reeds, Reina added, 'Less musical. But... we'll still have the sea.'

'The Lair by the Sea will always have the Sea, no matter where it goes.'

'Unless the gods send us inland--'

Cheimon sneezed a laugh. 'Windsinger forfend!'

***

When the new gene magic debuted at the Dragon Markets, Reina made arrangements to pay for its application to as many of the members of the clan who liked the look of it on themselves at the Scryer's Workshop. Gems they had in plenty--she and Hephaestus had been planning the growth of their gemstone hoard against just such eventualities--so the money was no concern. She ushered groups through the Workshop, gave her opinion when asked, and oversaw the changes.

Reina then quietly went and bought the new gene for herself.

When the clan was new and in dire need of funds, she'd reluctantly consented to have her clean white hide glossed with the Iridescence magic, because it would make her children more valuable and the clan needed money. But she never liked the way it made her look: the greenish sheen that she could never quite polish away clashed with her eyespot wings, and it frustrated her to look so odd to her own gaze. She endured it because it worked: the clan profited by the sales of her hatchlings. And eventually she resigned herself to the change.

With her new crystal-clean hide, she once again looked the way she thought she ought, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Did her duty by the clan by raising a nest of crystal babies with a passing stranger, sold them to the benefit of her clan, and then curled up to enjoy no longer looking jaundiced.

And then Cheimon found her. 'Oh no, no!' she exclaimed, laughing. 'Now you must fix the wings!'

'There's nothing wrong with my wings,' Reina said, slicking her crest back.

'They are far too dull for your new look,' Cheimon said, and nothing would do but that she drag the clan leader, and her best friend, back to the Markets to find herself a new wing gene.

Reina came home, thus, with not just the crystal hide but with new, paler, seraph wings. The hide she thought nothing of: that was merely making her look more like the self she expected to see in the reflecting pool. But the wings! She is a little self-conscious about them. And secretly thinks... well, that she might be pretty. Just a little.

***

'That ridgeback is definitely looking at you,' Cheimon whispered to her friend.

Reina shook her head. 'Don't be ridiculous, Chei.'

'No, really!' Cheimon glanced past her wing-arm, surreptitiously. 'I would go so far as to say that he's mooning.'

Reina rolled her eyes and kept walking. Their errands at the Market wouldn't run themselves.

***

...but she was forced to re-evaluate her opinion of her friend's hunches when she got the poem. The poem.

Hephaestus looked at it with lifted brows. 'That doesn't even scan properly.'

'He sent you a poem!' Cheimon crowed.

'He sent you a bad poem,' Hephaestus said, dry.

Reina looked at the note, petted it a little with one claw. 'No one's ever written me a poem before.'

'If that's the caliber of the typical offering, you should be grateful,' Hephaestus opined, and padded off to see to the hoard management. From the wallow where Argos was using Imbrius as a pillow, the former said, 'Don't mind him.'

Reina looked toward the skydancer who'd been her first mate, long ago when the clan was new. They no longer nested together--hadn't in a very long time--but she still loved him and valued his opinions.

'If you like him,' Argos said. 'Go tell him.'

'Drakes can be obtuse,' Imbrius agreed from his comfortable coil. 'He might not realize unless you tell him to his face. In plain terms.'

'I don't know if I like him,' Reina said. 'I don't even know him!'

'That we can fix,' Cheimon said, tapping her claws together in glee.

Reina felt a frisson of dismay at the thought of being the target of Cheimon's matchmaking. And yet... she looked at the poem again and smoothed the crumpled page. He'd written her a poem. 'Maybe he's still at the Markets.'

'Let's go look!'

***

Some months later, Reina was forced to admit that it had worked out a lot better than she'd anticipated. Was he the smartest drake in the clan? The most powerful? The most wise? No on every count. But somehow, he was just right. Smiling fondly, she set her muzzle on the ridgeback's shoulder and drowsed with him on their latest nest.

***

Reina had anticipated some turbulence when she'd arranged for the forthcoming expulsion of Isetnofret from the clan. In fairness she had refused to kill Iset outright, for the coatl had committed no crimes that anyone could prove. But that Iset had to go--that part was non-negotiable.

She had not anticipated the turbulence taking this shape. Standing on the bloody back deck of the Dream, Reina looked at the cooling corpse with grim eyes. So close to disaster, and only Filia had saved them from it. What if Iset had succeeded in using the scroll on Shadowknight? There were imperial breedchange magics, but they were so rare that even the combined riches of both clans could not have bought one to restore Shadowknight to his proper form.

Later, she thinks, she will thank Filia personally for solving the problem, and so finally. For now... 'Find me a mage who can deal with the blood,' she tells a nearby dragon, and goes to help Lucia with the body so that Shadowknight and Filia can have some privacy.

That part of the affair, at least, wrapped up well. Very well indeed. She wonders what the children will look like.

The field of tents that now extended alongside the clan's holdings would have gladdened Reina's heart had they been erected for one of the many gathers and festivals her dragons had celebrated in conjunction with Cloudkeeper's clan in the past. After generations of amity, the bonds between their lairs were rich and deep, interwoven through years of fosterage and mate-bonds. In some ways, Reina no longer thought of Cloudkeeper's folk as another clan. They were one family, half a-ground, half on the Dream.

What would they be now that the Dream was no more?

Reina was exhausted and heartsore enough on behalf of her own dragons. Many from the Lair by the Sea had died repelling the dread lord of demons that had destroyed the kiteship and slain so many of its inhabitants. Many more had been wounded. Her own injuries had been among the less grievous, and that in itself was cause for guilt. Why should she have been spared when so many had been reaped? And yet... there was work to be done. It was the Windsinger's will that the Lair not lose its leadership at a time when all were reeling from the tragedy of the kiteship's loss, and perhaps that was kindness at the end, even if it didn't feel so to Reina.

There had been so much to do in the past few days, and none of it the glorious work of songs. The carcass of the demon had to be disposed of. The kiteship's wreckage needed to be pulled apart for both survivors and salvage. The dead had to be exalted, buried, or burned, the wounded separated into those who would recover and those receiving palliative care as they died. The beasts needed interviewing... and justice, and in those days justice was often execution; to leave them alive and at the mercy of the grieving dragons of the Dream would have been torture. Dragons needed organizing in all these endeavors, and teams formed, assigned to their tasks, and then sent to rest so they would not sicken themselves in their desperation to help their friends and extended families.

It was a long time before Reina could finally seek her friend in any capacity other than a lieutenant accepting orders from a besieged captain. But at last she found Cloudkeeper beside a cliff, head lowered. Did they need words? Their bond, formed by the responsibilities they shared, that shaped them, was deeper than any more romantic or impermanent liaison. They were a reflection of the ties between their clans, and it was this that made the smaller, lighter skydancer rear up on her hind legs and rest her head against the Guardian's. The sunset's light pooled in the protective runes that Thelxinoe and Raia had made for the matriarch of their allies--the runes that had saved her so she could find a way forward out of the destruction of her Dream.

Reina said nothing. Curled a wing around her friend's neck and what she could reach of Cloudkeeper's back. Was there for her, because that's all there was left.

***