10. Aurora
AURORA
“The First-years all sit together for the first half of the semester before we get dragons and we’re divided into Wings,” Jorn-o explained, as we left the serving line.
“Then, once you get a dragon and you’re assigned to a Wing, you sit with your year and Wing.
Like over there—all the Second-year North Wings,” he said, motioning to one of the long tables.
I looked…and saw Ryse Skoren sitting at the head of a table that held around twenty-five Second-year cadets. His strange eyes met mine for a moment and lingered…then looked away.
I wished again that I could see him up close.
What was it about those eyes? And what were the jewel-like markings I saw around his temples and cheekbones?
They looked purple in one light and gold when he turned his head, and the angle changed.
Maybe I would find out if I tested out of the First-year classes and was placed in his Wing…
Then I saw who else was at his table—seated at the far end of the North Wing Second-year table was Chud Larson.
Luckily, he hadn’t seen me. He had his head down and was eating with a single-minded purpose that completely ignored table manners.
I shivered as I saw him wipe gravy off his chin with the back of his hand and then lick it off with his tongue. Disgusting.
I noticed that Ryse and two other cadets at his table were the only ones with the valuable golden Dragon Custard.
Jorn-o had said it was reserved for the riders who had bonded to a Gold, Silver, or Bronze-wing dragon.
Were Noble-wings that rare that only three of the twenty-five cadets were bonded to one?
I supposed I would find out if I ever visited the Dragon Caverns located on a much higher level of the Academy but for now, since I couldn’t see the dragons, I looked at the riders.
It was hard to believe that the upperclassmen at Ryse Skoren’s table were only a year older than me and Jorn-o. They all looked so much bigger than us. But, to be fair, everyone in the whole Mess Hall was bigger than me.
I remembered the pitying eyes of the women serving food in the line.
I must look terribly scrawny and malnourished to them.
They thought they could give me enough food to make me shoot up a foot and grow broad shoulders like Auren had, but I was never going to get much taller than I was.
I might fill out some, though—which would be a good thing, I thought.
It wasn’t right to be so skinny I could count my own ribs in the mirror.
Just hope no one else is going to be counting them later at bathing time, I thought and had to swallow down a lump of fear. But no, I wasn’t going to worry about that now. One thing at a time. Right now, I wanted to eat.
Jorn-o found us a seat at the First-year table with some of the other boys whose fathers worked in and around the Academy.
“This is Jakes but we call him Toady—because of his mouth, you know,” he said, nodding at a boy with wide, rubbery lips and flat eyes who did, indeed, look a little like a toad.
“And this is Tomas but he goes by Bugs,” he went on, pointing to a cadet with thick glasses.
The lenses magnified his large green eyes, which did make him look kind of bug-eyed.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, nodding at both of them. They nodded back and Jorn-o went on with the introductions.
“This is Clay but we call him ‘Leaper’,” he said, nodding at a boy with carroty hair and bright blue eyes.
“Leaper?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Oh, it’s an old nickname,” the boy said, looking embarrassed.
“His father is the Flight Instructor for the First-years,” Jorn-o explained. “But he wouldn’t let Leaper play on the Dragon Flight Simulator when he was little without supervision.”
I stopped with a spoonful of stew halfway to my mouth.
“What? There’s a simulator?” My father had never mentioned anything like that.
“’Course there is—how else to you think you get practice riding a dragon until the one you Impress is big enough to ride?” Toady asked. He followed this question with a smacking of his lips as he ate a big bite of lamb stew.
“Anyway, Leaper here wanted to get on the Flight Simulator so badly—“ Jorn-o started
“That he leaped right onto its back!” Bugs continued.
“And then I fell off and onto the net,” Leaper said, rolling his eyes. “Big deal—lots of people fall the first time they try to mount.”
“Yeah, but not everyone jumps from the observation balcony,” Jorn-o pointed out. “It’s twenty feet above the simulator,” he added, speaking to me.
It sounded to me like Leaper’s nickname should have been “fearless” or maybe “foolhardy” but I didn’t say it out loud.
I just nodded and put another spoonful of lamb stew in my mouth.
It was the best thing I’d ever eaten, and it was hard to pay attention to the conversation around me when I was so hungry and the food was so good.
“Who’s you’re new friend, anyway, Jorn-o?” Leaper asked, looking me up and down.
“Oh, this is Auri.” Jorn-o nodded at me. “He’s a Lysandra,” he added.
“Huh. Looks more like a runt to me,” Toady remarked.
“Yeah, Runt—that fits him,” Bugs said and Leaper laughed.
And that was how I got my second nickname.
Again, I thought about protesting, but unlike when Chud Larson had called me the same name, there didn’t seem to be any harmful intent.
And all the rest of them had nicknames, except for Jorn-o, and I was the smallest one at the table.
At any of the tables, unfortunately. I was probably going to be called worse than “Runt” before my time at the Academy was over.
I was just going to have to grow thicker skin and get over it.
So I just grunted in what I hoped was a masculine way and kept shoveling food into my face.
I ate so fast I didn’t realize how full I was getting until I saw that the only thing left on my plate was the bowl of golden Dragon Custard.
“Look—he got the custard!” Toady elbowed Leaper as I picked up the bowl.
“Lucky son-of-a-bitch,” Bugs muttered. “Why does Runt get it when the rest of us don’t?”
“Yeah—my father flies a Bronze-wing, but I didn’t get any,” Leaper muttered rebelliously. “I have Noble blood in my House—they should have given me a bowl too, not just Runt.”
“The kitchen ladies gave Auri a bowl of the Dragon Custard because he’s a runt,” Jorn-o said. He shot me an apologetic look. “No offense, Auri.”
“None taken,” I said, shrugging in what I hoped was a manly way. “I know I’m small.”
“The Dragon Custard doesn’t have any kind of magical properties, you know,” Jorn-o went on.
“I know—I’ve seen the kitchen ladies make it.
It’s just got a lot of stuff to build you up and make you strong.
To make you…” He hesitated and cast another glance at me.
“To make you gain weight. They probably thought Auri needed it.”
“Why don’t we all eat it,” I suggested, seeing what I hoped was an opportunity to make friends. “Come on—everybody try a bite. I’m really full,” I added. “I can’t finish it by myself.”
Everyone hesitated, as though I had suggested breaking an important but unwritten rule.
“I don’t know,” Jorn-o hedged. “I have hardly any Noble blood at all in my House. Same with Bugs and Toady.”
“Come on—one bite,” I urged him. “I won’t tell.”
“Well…I have always wondered what it tasted like,” he admitted.
“There should be enough for one spoonful each,” I told him. “We should all try it.”
I picked up my spoon, took a small amount, and then held out the bowl to the boys sitting around me.
Leaper was the first to take a spoonful and after him, Toady, then Bugs. Jorn-o was last, but he took a spoonful like the rest. By silent but mutual consent none of us ate until everyone had some of the Dragon Custard on their spoon.
“To Runt,” Leaper said, raising his spoon to his mouth.
“To Runt,” the rest chorused and then we all took a bite.
The Dragon Custard was like nothing I had tasted before.
It melted like honey on my tongue and tasted sweet and tangy and delicious.
And though Jorn-o had said it had no magical properties, I could feel strength and vitality coursing through me as I swallowed the single spoonful.
It almost made me wish I’d kept the entire bowl for myself.
But then I looked around at the wondering faces of my new friends and was sure I’d made the right decision.
“So that’s what it tastes like,” Jorn-o breathed.
“Fucking delicious,” Leaper muttered, licking his spoon as Toady and Bugs nodded in agreement. “Can’t wait until we get our dragons so I can have more of it,” he added.
“When do we get our dragons? I mean, our eggs?” I asked curiously. My father had told Auren and me a lot about the great aerial flights and training exercises at the Academy, but he hadn’t spoken much of the minutia of life here.
“A few months into our First-year,” Jorn-o told me. “There’s a clutch of eggs hardening on the Hatching Sands right now. They’ll be ready for Impression soon.”
“After you Impress an egg, you visit it as much as you can to strengthen the connection,” Bugs explained. “That way, when your dragon hatches, it’s all ready to bond with you.”
“But how do you know which egg you’ll get? I mean—how can you tell which one is right for you?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll know. The drakeling inside will speak to you.” Toady nodded wisely and tapped his temple. “Here. You’ll hear his or her voice in your mind and then you’ll know—that’s your dragon.”
“Really?” I was surprised—my father had never spoken about any of this. But maybe it was a sacred, private kind of thing. Making mental contact with your dragon for the first time must be a life-changing experience.
“Really,” Jorn-o confirmed. “And if you’re wondering how boys from the Great Houses always end up with Noble-blood dragons, it’s because they can smell your blood—right through the shell.”
“Really?” I felt my eyes go wide. “I didn’t know dragons could do that!”
“Sure, they can—the right blood smells sweet to them. Didn’t you ever spend time with your father’s dragon?” Bugs asked.
“Yeah—didn’t he ride a Crimson Gold-wing? Before he…” Leaper trailed off abruptly.
“My father’s dragon was too fierce to get near,” I said, ignoring the way all of them were looking in different directions and pointedly not talking about my father’s suicide. “My bro—I mean my sister and I didn’t dare get to close to him.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Jorn-o gave me a pitying look. “I grew up with G’lornie. My father took me on my first ride the minute I was able to walk.”
“My father’s Blue is grumpy most of the time,” Toady said with a sigh.
“My father’s Green wants attention day and night—but she’s a female, so what can you expect?” Bugs rolled his eyes.
“I thought female dragons were getting scarce?” I said, frowning. “Wouldn’t it be a good thing to have a female dragon?”
“It is if they have Nobel bloodlines,” Jorn-o explained. “For instance, it’s the Head Master’s dragon who laid the latest clutch of eggs. She’s a Turquoise Gold-wing—the only female of that kind in the whole Academy.”
“She also laid the only Midnight Gold-wing dragon egg in years—that’s the one that Ryse Skoren Impressed,” Leaper murmured, nodding at the Second-year North Wing table.
“Of course he Impressed it—the Skoren’s aren’t just a Great House—they have dragon blood in their bloodlines,” Jorn-o said.
“Wait…you mean they…?” I raised my eyebrows, unsure how to go on.
“Interbred with the wild drakes, long before we domesticated Dragons—or so the stories say,” Jorn-o finished for me. He shrugged. “Who knows if it’s true, but everyone knows that no one of the Skoren line has ever bonded to anything less than a Silver-wing and most of them fly Gold-wings.”
Yeah, the Skorens are like royalty around here,” Toady said, nodding.
I thought of how Ryse Skoren had saved me from Chud Larson and wondered why he’d bothered. Was it because he saw my hair and eyes and was extending a courtesy to a member of another Great House? Or did he just see a pitifully skinny runt and decided to help me out of the goodness of his heart?
Studying his calm, stern face from across the room, I wasn’t sure which explanation might be the most plausible.
Just then a great bell started tolling somewhere and everyone jumped into action.
“That’s the after-dinner bell—it means we First-years all have fifteen minutes to get to our dorms,” Jorn-o explained, when I looked around in confusion.
“What? But I thought we got assigned to our dorms tomorrow,” I protested.
“They’ll make the formal assignment based on our exam scores,” he said. “But for tonight, we’re all together in The Great Dorm. Come on—we don’t want to be late.”
“But it’s not that late,” I protested, wishing I could have more time before I was cooped up in a room with a hundred strange boys.
“That doesn’t matter,” Leaper said as we all grabbed our trays and hustled to the long rectangular window where used dishware was deposited.
“The upperclassmen get more time—by the time you’re a Fourth-year you can stay out until midnight,” Bugs told me. “But First-years have to get to their dorms right after dinner.”
However, there was a brief reprieve coming. A moment later, a booming voice started echoing in the Mess Hall.
“First-years!” it shouted. “First-year cadets! Listen up—before you go to your dorm, please stop by the Commissary first to pick up your uniform and personal items. If you don’t know the way, ask someone!”
“The Commissary is on the Second Level, so we’re not far from it,” Jorn-o said helpfully. “Come on, Auri—I’ll take you.”
Leaper, Bugs, and Toady tagged along and the five of us ended up at the back of a long line of cadets who were waiting for their new Academy uniforms.
I just hoped they’d have a uniform to fit me.