Chapter Eleven Taissa
Chapter Eleven
Taissa
Cronus is colicky and furious after being transported to Dunanaird in the train’s roomy livestock compartment. The Stymphs aren’t used to flying long distances, but apparently Cronus would rather have dropped dead from the sky instead of traveling with his ungrateful assortment of brats.
Not only is this his first time out of Pinion-upon-Keat, it’s also his first time off of the Nexitory’s property, born and bred in captivity, then shunted to the side when he became too barmy to have on the pitch.
Apparently, he’s a bit overwhelmed by all of this.
“You’re so dramatic,” Taissa clucks out loud, exhausted and nervous for the game tomorrow.
Yet loath as she is to admit it, Kion’s brutal and masochistic drills have begun to give her back her strength.
She can feel it in her body—a thrumming of energy curling around her bones, begging to be released in the air. In the skies.
“How dare you call me dramatic?” screeches Cronus.
“Respect your elders, hatchling, or reap the consequences!” His beak snaps menacingly at her; she bats it away irritably.
Cronus takes it upon himself to viciously stomp on her toes.
Taissa jerks her bunny-baffied foot away from his descending talons with a glare.
Her glamour is itching her skin, itching it furiously, as she brushes Cronus down in the Cockatrices’ guest stable, which connects to the field they’ll play on tomorrow.
She wants him sleek and glossy for the game.
Unlike Sansa, who practically preened and purred underneath Taissa’s pre-game administrations (beeswax on her scales and nails, a muscle massage, plus some daily affirmations such as “you’re the prettiest wyvern in all the land”), Cronus is threatening to shit on her.
“I’ll do it,” he squawks.
Like she ever doubted it.
The guest stable in Dunanaird is nothing like the Nexitory’s stable with Yggdrasil.
There’s no grand tree for the Stymphs; instead, there are only wooden stalls with hay and water.
It smells like wet wood and old sweat. Like the Wingeds are common horses instead of magnificent steeds.
The NCL Cockatrices are nasty for this, as the dismal lodgings are clearly an attempt to dwindle the Stymphs’ chances of victory tomorrow.
Taissa bites back her irritation. Cronus, after the life he’s had, deserves a ridiculously posh stable fit for a king.
But then again, the Cockatrices have never had Major League money like the Stymphs.
Their Nexitory is a fourth of the size of what Taissa expected, ramshackle and made from scuffed concrete.
The bleachers lining the field are in disrepair, and even the grass is wilted, as if it’s depressed by the constant blunderings of its team.
In the next stall over, Adriel is brushing down Ahava with no difficulty at all.
Taissa feels him glancing sideways at her.
She brightens, but only slightly. Every time she’s gone to knock on Adriel’s door, he’s been out.
And BSL is an absolute menace to learn online, although she’s been taking a lesson per night on her battered laptop.
She can’t quite get a read on Adriel. Unlike James, he’s not outright hostile nor snobbish.
But unlike Bronte and Knox, who’ve been steadily trying to befriend her (she’s convinced Knox is on the verge of making her a friendship bracelet), he’s not outright friendly, either.
He reminds her of a Greek sculpture, appearing beautiful and gentle, but ultimately cold to the touch.
The others have long left the stables. But Adriel seems to cherish rubbing down Ahava, and Taissa…Well, with the way that Cronus is behaving, she has no choice but to stay in the stables until he’s presentable for tomorrow.
For her first match in two years.
Her stomach twists, and she tries to ignore how her muscles have gone all wobbly.
“Adriel,” she says instead, momentarily pausing in her administrations. Cronus ruffles his feathers in relief as Adriel turns to her expectantly. “Locke told me that you’re the one to talk to if I wanted to learn BSL.”
Adriel blinks, studying her for a long, measuring moment.
Ahava, too, cocks her head and clucks expectantly, bronze beak glittering.
Cronus snaps his, glaring at his daughter.
Ahava makes a threatening grrrk grrk sound in the back of her throat.
Is it just her, or does Cronus look slightly approving as his daughter ruffles her wings in warning?
Taissa blinks as Adriel clears his throat, pulling her attention back toward him.
“Kion told me you might come asking,” he muses, “but he didn’t sound as though he believed it.”
“He didn’t.”
A brow rises. Adriel is a beautiful boy, slim and small, with heavily lashed eyes and pink-tinged cheeks.
A small earring in the shape of a feather glitters in his right ear, and his oversized sweater looks like it would be the softest thing she’s ever touched.
When he scratches his eyebrow, she sees that his slender fingers sparkle with thin rings.
“You two are kind of a really…strange couple,” he murmurs.
She grimaces. He sounds like Estee. Her mum had called her on the train, full of questions, each of which Taissa had dodged with expert skill (“I’m not not not dating him,” she’d said, listening to Estee’s bewildered splutters). “Well, opposites attract and all,” she forces out now.
Adriel shrugs, but the motion is coolly calculated. “I think you’re actually, like, too similar.”
Slander. Libel. She’s nothing like that utter bampot.
Bitter words rise to Taissa’s lips but she shoves them back down.
They’re supposed to be in love. Luckily Adriel doesn’t comment on how she’s contorting her face in an effort not to talk shite about Kion (she looks, she suspects, highly constipated).
“But will you do it?” she presses. “Will you teach me?”
“I guess so,” admits Adriel, and his eyes are just slightly warmer now. Less suspicious. “The rest of the team learned. It took them a while, but we have time. That is, if we win tomorrow’s match. You’re one of us now, right?”
“I guess so,” she echoes.
Adriel’s mouth twitches. “By the way,” he says, glancing down at the stable floor, “is there a reason you’ve been wearing bunny slippers, like, literally everywhere?”
Slowly, Taissa looks at Cronus.
He cackles with undeniable pride, and after a moment, Ahava joins in.
“Be quiet,” Taissa warns, mourning her ruined trainers, but the stymphalians only laugh harder.
In the grimy Dunanaird locker room the next morning, Taissa scratches a Nullifying glyph over the Glamour glyph with her qyl, letting the illusion of blonde hair and pale skin dissolve with relief. Glamours itch vaguely, like a new, blooming mosquito bite.
The men are changing just around the corner of the faded, tiled wall, while Taissa, Isla, Bronte, and Mahina opt to gear up in the smaller, separate section of the locker room, with a changing area and showers meant for female players.
Bronte, clad only in a sports bra and underwear, is busy etching glyphs onto her toned body and eyeing Taissa merrily.
“Do us a favor, hey, and don’t use any illegal glyphs this time? Or do. Maybe it’s just what we need.”
“Bronte!” Isla softly scolds while Mahina grins right back at the Dozer.
Taissa grimaces as she shrugs off her shirt and pointedly only draws Balance and Focus glyphs on the inside of her left arm, before inking the Shielding glyph just underneath her clavicle.
Communication and Agility are next, on her inner right arm (she applies them slightly clumsily: She’s right-handed).
Carriwitchet pros are permitted to use these glyphs only as long as they’re of the Level One variety, but combined with their skill and their bond with their Winged, it’s enough.
A Cooling glyph, reserved for summer heat and hot riding leathers, goes on her stomach.
As the magic settles into her body, Taissa closes her eyes, focusing on the humming sensation as her mind sharpens and settles, honed by Focus, and as the world around her grows steadier.
With the Communication glyph, she’s ten times more aware of her teammates—she can hear the men’s breathing as they pull on their gear, and the sharp whispers between Kion and James as they review their starting position: Echelon, followed by a sharp breakaway in all directions.
This all feels like muscle memory: pulling back her hair into a tight, elaborate plait, hitching on her kit, rolling her shoulders and neck.
If she closes her eyes, she can pretend that she’s back with the Wyverns, and that Sansa is waiting for her in the stables, just through the back door of the locker room.
In that crotchety stymphalian-shaped space in her heart, a prickling of annoyance grows. A jealousy. Cronus.
She keeps her eyes open.
“I’m, er, excited to play with you,” Isla mumbles as she laces up her boots. Taissa’s noticed that every time she speaks to her, she turns a flushed, shy pink. It makes her red hair and freckles stand out even more. “No matter what the result is.”
“Me, too,” agrees Bronte, “as long as you don’t fuck us up.”
Mahina smirks. “Are you going to fuck us up?” she signs, Isla translating for her.
Taissa watches her hands carefully. After a quick, impromptu introductory lesson with Adriel in the stables as he finished brushing down Ahava, Taissa can only recognize you and us (the latter being a somewhat circular motion with her index fingers), but still, it’s an improvement.
“I’m not going to fuck anything up,” Taissa snaps back, bristling, moments before Kion claps his hands and calls for a meeting.
She stomps around the corner, avoiding eye contact with Locke although she can feel his stare burning into her back.
They haven’t spoken much since his willy rose to the occasion and said hello.
(Part of her is flattered that his tadger thinks so, well, highly of her.)