31. Kailin
KAILIN
I used to think loneliness was the absence of company, but I'm alone even when surrounded by friends and mentors.
Loneliness is reaching for Alar at night and finding empty space.
It's waking up in the room we shared together and expecting to see his jacket hanging on the back of the chair.
It's going through my days with a hollowness in my chest. Nothing brings me joy, and my world feels off kilter.
—From the journal of Kailin Strom
"Ihate you," Morek announced around a mouthful of bread. "I'm sitting through Tactical Formation Theory with old Davorin droning about wind shear, and you get to skip all of it and go play with Moki. It's not fair. I'm registering a formal complaint."
"With whom?" Shovia asked.
"With the universe. With whoever's in charge of fairness."
"No one's in charge of fairness," Shovia said. "The world is not fair, and the sooner you realize that the less disappointed you'll be."
I shook my head. "I promise you that you don't want to switch places with me. Saphir wants me to become a shaman yesterday so I can take over for him, and he works me harder than any of the instructors ever did. Even Odinah."
"I don't mind Odinah and the conditioning," Morek said. "It's the classroom stuff that gets me."
Shovia leaned back with the strong cup of caff Morek had made for us. "What does Saphir have you do other than read those smelly old scrolls?"
I grimaced. "He has me practicing delivering speeches. You know how much I hate public speaking."
"I do." She chuckled behind her cup. "Are you getting any better?"
"A little," I admitted. "He stands me up in the middle of his office and makes me deliver inspired sermons in front of him and Moki.
" I picked at the goat cheese crumbs that had fallen off my sandwich.
"He gives me his old speeches, has me rewrite them in my own style, and then deliver them with feeling.
I have to stand there and project confidence and conviction, and hold myself like I mean it, while the two of them sit and judge me. "
Morek snorted, laughing. "Moki judges you? I'd put money on Moki being the harsher critic."
"You'd win that bet," I said. "Saphir just frowns and tells me to try again, while Moki shakes his head and chitters and looks like he's so disappointed in me he can barely stand it. He's so dramatic for a little cat-monkey chimera."
"No wonder," Shovia said. "Moki has been watching Saphir deliver speeches for a thousand years, and he judges you by Saphir's standards. That's the definition of unfair, but as I said, life is not fair."
I shrugged. "Saphir is teaching me to project, to push my voice out from somewhere lower in my belly so it carries without shouting. He says that I'm talking from my throat and sounding like I'm apologizing for making a sound."
"He's right," Shovia said. "You do that."
I glared at her. "Thank you."
She finished her caff and put the cup down. "What you need is proper actor training. A real performer who knows how to work a crowd, how to land a line, how to make people lean in. That's a whole craft. Saphir is a natural, so he doesn't know how to teach the craft."
"And where exactly am I going to find a real performer?" I said. "It's not as if traveling theater troupes are invited to the Citadel."
Shovia sighed. "Maybe we should form an amateur theater group. Do you remember the last troupe that came to Skywatcher's Point before our pilgrimage?"
She meant before the square had exploded, killing and wounding many.
It had been repaired since, but I still felt uneasy when I landed there after receiving the Hero of Elucia medal.
All those pleasant memories of the place from before had been erased by this one act of barbaric terrorism that had meant to remind Elucians that we were not safe even in Skywatcher's Point, the town closest to the Citadel.
"Was it the Painted Wagon group?" I asked.
"That's the one." She grinned. "With the sun on one side and the moons on the other, and the back folded down into a stage. They were good."
"They made my mother cry," Morek said. "I didn't like it. I like comedies, not tragedies. Elu knows we have enough of those in real life."
"I could use a good comedy," Codric said.
He didn't speak much these days and given that he was the comedian in our group, it was no wonder that our meals had turned somber. He missed Alar as much as I did, and that formed a new kinship between us.
"I don't care for them," Shovia said. "They are often so stupid that I feel like I'm losing brain cells just from watching them."
I kept nibbling on my cheese while the three of them kept discussing various plays, and Codric concluded that television was better than theater.
Sharing an apartment with my friends was what was keeping me from completely losing my mind.
I had to pretend to be okay for their sake, and the pretending was lifting my mood as if it were real.
There was something to be said for faking it, especially when it was done not to elevate one's worth but to elevate others' well-being.
It was for a good cause.
"We should get going." Morek started collecting the dishes from our lunch. "Formations."
"Formations," Shovia repeated. "It's like dancing. We all need to be synchronized."
I was not training with them because I would never be required to fly in formation. But I was still a rider, still needed instruction, and I was being tutored by one of the best riders on the force.
As I emerged on the roof after all the cadets had flown off, Morgateth was already waiting for me, and the sight of him eased the ache in my chest. Or maybe it was the influx of sheer power I experienced every time I was near him.
He could feed me energy through the bond, and he did, but there was no substitute for this.
"Had a nice lunch with your friends?" he asked, and there was a note of jealousy in his mental voice.
"Yes. We reminisced about theater groups visiting Skywatcher's Point. Have you ever seen a performance?"
He uttered a sound akin to a grunt. "Why would I bother with human nonsense?"
Why indeed?
According to Onyx, dragons had their own type of drama, their own politics and cliques and secrets, but they didn't share any of it with humans, so I couldn't comment on it.
After checking the straps and buckles, I climbed up to my place between his wings and settled into the saddle.
Ravel was going to check them again, so I hadn't done a thorough job of it despite Alar's insistence that I do.
I took his letter out of my pocket and unfolded it.
I had read it four times already, and this was going to be the fifth.
It had arrived yesterday with the regular mail, and it was the first I'd received from Alar since he'd left.
It wasn't written in the cipher because he'd sent it from the first outpost his convoy had stopped at, and he had no great secrets to tell me.
He missed me, saying it in three different ways, as if he didn't trust the first two to convey his meaning.
He described the journey and how the landscape had flattened, and how much he missed the mountains.
Be careful. Please. Check your harness twice before every flight, every strap, every buckle, even when you are certain. I know you'll roll your eyes when you read this, but do it for me so I can sleep at night without worrying for you.
He'd done that for weeks, checking his harness twice before every flight and reminding me to do the same.
The two dreams I had of him falling to his death were about the saddle getting loose, so I couldn't fault him for being paranoid.
I'd been paranoid as well, and that was why I'd been grateful when he had been summoned home.
I missed him like crazy, but knowing he was safe in Catonia was worth the pain.
"I will not let you fall," Morgateth said in my mind. "You can write a letter back to your prince and tell him that."
His certainty was my bedrock. I folded the letter and put it away.
"I know." I put my hand on his warm scales. "I trust you with my life."
I had started my reply letter last night, but I didn't finish it. I would finish composing it tonight and add one of the sketches I'd made of him since he left.
I'd tell him that I'd been pulled from the regular training and was now under Saphir's tutelage, and that I was practicing giving speeches to a disapproving Moki.
It would make Alar smile.
I would not tell him how much the quiet of our room got to me in the nights, and how much I hated it every time I reached for him in sleep, forgetting that he wasn't there, and the crushing sadness of realizing that he wasn't sleeping next to me and perhaps never would.
He had enough on his plate and didn't need to feel the pain of my loneliness on top of it. My gift to him was telling him only the good and the warm and keeping the sad and the cold to myself.
I sensed Onyx approaching before I saw him.
Morgateth shifted under me, and I wondered if he'd felt the flutter in my chest. I'd put my shields up, hiding my thoughts from Onyx and Morgateth, but I couldn't hide them from myself.
I'd given up pretending I didn't feel anything.
I just excused it as insignificant, not even worth acknowledging.
It was just a simple instinctive response to the sight of a striking man on the back of an extraordinary dragon, and it meant nothing.
I loved Alar with all my heart, but I'd stopped lying to myself that my pulse didn't quicken when Ravel and Onyx dropped out of the sky.
It had started five and a half years ago, when I'd first looked into those dark eyes with flakes of gold, and the memory of that moment was forever etched into my mind.