Happy Birthday, Becky! :D

[ladylight]

A-happy birthday to a-you,
A-happy birthday to a-you,
A-happy BIRTHday dear a-Becky ...

I don't know why the As are there - that's just how my Nan used to sing it! ;D (She never said Becky, though. That would have been eerie.)

Right. Present. I have a bit of an apology for you here. Since I don't know enough about the intriguing bunch who haunt your gallery - *coughWRITESOMETHINGcough* - I had to fall back on my bunch. Lorannon seemed obvious, but he didn't give me a lot of help ("Shh, I'm talking. Now, the cheese in the chapel ... I think it was three centimetres thick, but it could have been two. It was a sort of yellowy-grey-green colour. Brann took a bite first - no, wait, it was Huwe ...").

In the end, I started rewriting a very old story I found on my hard-drive ... but I didn't get very far, because no matter what I do to it, I can't seem to banish the Narrative-Killing Touch of the Mad 16-Year-Old Alyssa. :( I've put it at the end just because I couldn't come to your birthday post empty-handed, but I have a counter-offer.

I can
a) continue trying to make something of the Lorannon story
b) send you a MASSIVELY SPOILY excerpt from 'Soulfire Summoning' which I wrote about Nuan instead.

I usually hate giving spoilies, but it's your birthday, and I'm a lot happier with Nuan's bit than the stuff down below. If you don't mind spoiling a few big plot details, I'll send it to you. Otherwise, I'll try to make the kiddies less excruciating and bring on some more Lorannon! ;)

Hope you had a wonderful day, m'dear! :D


Dray stumbled disconsolately into the ‘Prissy Miss’, not even hearing the old door squeal its horrendous squeal as it swung shut behind him. He was numb with horror and running, his brain skittering from solution to solution like an uncertain pup. She’s gone! She’s gone!

There was only one person Dray trusted above everyone else to put the whole world to rights, and although he knew deep down that today was a different story, he’d come here anyway. Crossing the smoky gloom of the taproom, he walked up to the bar and clambered up onto one of the wicker stools, head bowed, brown hair drooping around his face, struggling to keep his sobs locked in behind his teeth.

“What’s the matter, young Dray?” asked Uncle Groningar from behind the bar, turning a sympathetic eye and ear towards the lad. “You’ve got far too many years left to see out before you start shuffling around like that!”

“Triptie’s gone!” he burst out, hiding his face on the sticky bar-top.

“Gone? What do you mean?” Uncle Groningar lifted Dray’s quivering face with one strong old hand under his chin.

“She’s gone! In the water! She just …”

“In the water! What water, Dray?”

“I … I told Torcor and Orliff … they’re already going to look … but … but …”

With the force of an explosion and a squawk of rusty hinges the tavern door burst open again, catapulting a young slip of a girl into the room. As the door groaned shut behind her, the girl flew at the bar with red-gold hair flying, drawing startled or annoyed glances from a few of the wayside tavern’s patrons.

“Triptie!” shouted Dray, his downcast face brightening as she took a flying leap and landed breathlessly on the stool beside him. Her famous red dress was mud-streaked and damp, her equally famous hair no less so.

“Dray!” she answered crossly, folding her willowy arms and scrunching up her perfect oval face at him. “Didn’t you hear me yelling after you?”

But Dray hadn’t heard anything after what he thought had been Triptie’s last shriek. “No,” he said, squirming around on his stool. “Elementals, Triptie, I searched around the pool for so long! I thought you …” He gulped and fell silent, determined not to cry.

“I floated right down to the Streamfill and climbed out,” Triptie replied, as if it should be obvious, but her brow furrowed with remembered fear. “Do you think It’s … still there?”

“What’s this It?” interrupted Uncle Groningar. “What’ve the pair of you been up to?”

“We went down to the pool by Jorbrey’s,” Dray replied guiltily.

“Dray! You know you’re not to go down there, your mother’s warned you a hundred times!” Groningar scowled at him, then turned his formidable glare upon Triptie, his eyebrows bristling fiercely. “And what will your mother say when I tell her, hey?”

“Oh, don’t!” Triptie’s blue eyes froze over in terror. “Don’t tell her, Groaney! We were just looking - and it was Dray who suggested it, anyway!”

“Did not!” gasped Dray, scandalised.

Dray’s uncle did not lose his frown. “Whoever suggested it, you both went,” he growled. “And just as everyone’s been telling you from day one, if you go wandering around the pool up near Jorbrey’s hills, you’ll fall in. As you obviously did.”

“I wouldn’t’ve!” cried Triptie in jumbled outrage. “If It hadn’t poked its head out of the rocks we were climbing and hit me, I’d never’ve fallen!”

“What? You climbed up the west face?”

“Yes!” Dray leaped in at this point, eager to tell the story. “We decided to go and take a look up there, because all the birds that nest up there were all lying at the bottom -”

“Dead!” added Triptie in excited horror.

“- Eaten!” Dray agreed. “But we decided to climb up there and see what got ‘em, and Triptie climbed up first, and halfway up on the first nesting ledge, a horrible thing with scales and bristles poked its head out and knocked Triptie into the water!”

Triptie nodded fiercely. “With its tail - a long, spiky tail!” she chimed in. “And it screeched at me - ‘eeeeewk!’.”

“I was so scared that I jumped off into the water, too!” continued Dray. “I was going to hit it with a rock, but it made me drop it and jump away! I got to the shore of the pool, though, and I couldn’t find Triptie there …”

Triptie rolled her eyes. “Because I floated right away, right down to the Streamfill, and climbed out and then ran all the way here. Well, a lot of it.”

“So what do you think, Uncle Groaney?” asked Dray, using the name Triptie had long ago coined. “I think we’d better get Torcor and Orliff, and Tuppey too, to go kill the thing, and we’d better tell Jorbrey that there’s a monster near his property -!”

Uncle Groaney frowned again. He was doing a lot of that now. “What you saw, you pair of scamps, is just one of those big egg-lizards we get crawling in here from the East every few years. He was probably clearing out a shrike-nest or two when Triptie disturbed him. So leave him alone! And do as you’re told from now on - you could have drowned, falling into that pool!”

“Groaney, it wasn’t an egg-lizard!” insisted Triptie stubbornly. “Egg-lizards don’t eat birds, just their eggs! And this was a big thing!”

Dray chimed in with equal determination, “And it was too scary to be an egg-lizard! My stomach went all cold when it looked at me, and it made me jump off! And I think, just when it moved to hit Triptie off the edge with its tail, I think I saw wings!”

“Wings now?” Groningar chuckled and tousled Dray’s dark, damp hair, oblivious to the outraged look in the boy’s brown eyes. “It’ll spit lightning next. Come on, you two, take a rag each and start cleaning out the common room - and maybe I won’t be telling your parents what you’ve been up to.”

“It was a monster lizard!” wailed Triptie, but Groaney simply pushed a soaking-rag into one of her unwilling hands, gave Dray another, and sternly pointed out to the tables.

“And make sure you don’t annoy the customers!” he called after them, with affection.

Each mirroring the dark scowl on the other’s face, Dray and Triptie stomped out towards the nearest table and started wiping down its grimy surface. “Not fair,” Triptie muttered into her hair.

“Nope,” growled Dray. That was as far as their rebellion went - Uncle Groaney had a dreadful temper when pushed.

Well-accustomed to this particular chore, Dray let his eyes wander around the common room as he scrubbed, looking around the numerous empty tables and the scant few occupied ones - only seven. Though it was a wayside tavern on one of the busier roads in the Source River valleys, the ‘Prissy Miss’ was often near-empty at this time of year - more frequently since a rival business, the ‘Welcome Hearth’, had opened further up the road.

Braxon from the Outreach Farm was at his usual table near the kitchens with Sorbin and Fellman - the three farmers spent most of their time here during the slow winter - and Slops, the town’s drunken crier, was as always slumped at the bar itself. The other tables were occupied by strangers - five carters at one table near the back, playing a subdued card game; a tattered minstrel at a table near the bar, charmingly chatting up the barmaid, Lona (beneath Groaney’s watchful eye: she was like a daughter to him); and a few other scattered groups, middling merchants for the most part, dotted around other tables.

Dray shivered a little as he mopped away, entertaining the hope that one of the three tables by the fire would be empty, but of course they were not - they were Uncle Groaney’s most popular tables, especially in winter.

Just as Dray was about to turn back to his table-wiping, he noticed with delight that one of the fireside tables - the one furthest towards the corner - had only a single patron sitting at it. Perhaps they could get away with cleaning that one!

“Hey, Triptie,” he hissed, “that table over there looks dirtiest.”

“There’s someone there, Dray,” Triptie hissed back.

“I’m sure he won’t mind. Look, he’s all on his own - maybe he even wants someone to talk to.”

“I don’t think Groaney’s going to be happy,” warned Triptie, but she left off her work at their chillier table anyway, just as eager as Dray was for an excuse to stand nearer the fire.

Waiting carefully until Groaney went into the kitchens to fetch some gruel for old Slops, Dray and Triptie sidled nonchalantly across the room, occasionally giving a nearby table a rub for show, and made their gradual way to the fireside table in the corner. It wasn’t the closest, but at least it was within feel of the fire!

“Ah,” sighed Triptie, putting her back towards the slightly distant flames and swatting disinterestedly at the table with her rag. “That’s lovely!”

Dray nodded in happy agreement, proud of his plan, and then remembered their subterfuge. “Please excuse us, sir,” he said, looking towards the patron at the end of the table and summoning up his service manners. “This table gets very sooty …”

“Eep!” squeaked Triptie suddenly.

Dray didn’t squeak, but he did stare at the man sitting at their table. The man was wrapped up very plainly in a faded blue travelling-cloak - a bit odd when he had the fire there, to say nothing of wearing his hood up indoors - with some sort of paler clothing showing in hints and folds underneath. He wore tall riding-boots that reached right up to his knees; those, at least, were very easy to see, since the man had pulled his chair out from under the low table and stretched his long legs right out in front of him.

But it was not his clothes that had caused Dray to gape or Triptie to squeal; it was his face, made visible within his hood as he turned to look straight at them. The man who eyed them now, head tilted slightly in amused inquiry, had a fine, outlandish face with a slim nose and high cheekbones … and slanting, catlike green eyes!

“Eep!” Triptie squealed again, and the sound nudged Dray into action - he scooted away from the table and back to the bar with Triptie hot on his heels, just as Uncle Groaney emerged again from the kitchens to meet their onrush.

“Groaney, Groaney!” cried Triptie, tugging on startled Groningar’s apron and stabbing her finger with denunciatory heat back towards the table. Dray tugged on Uncle Groaney’s hand instead. “Look quick, there’s a goblin at th-”

“Didn’t I tell you two not to harass the customers?” Groaney interrupted in a growl, stopping them both in mid-tug. “That’s not a goblin, it’s an Elf -”

“Elf? Really?” gasped Triptie.

“- But he’s Paladin, too, so just you leave him alone - or you’ll end up like Sorbin.”

“Sorbin?” Dray asked, looking over to the farmer’s table at Groaney’s ominous words. Sorbin sat a little slouched in his chair, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary other than that. “What’s wrong with Sorbin?”

Groaney waved towards a tidily collected little pile of debris behind the bar. “Sorbin got a wicker stool broken on him when he kept trying to pick a fight, that’s what. He had nothing but a splitting headache for his troubles, and serve him right, too, for trying to fight in my tavern.”

Dray and Triptie’s mouths formed Os of mingled horror and delight, as was usually the case when they heard something wonderfully dreadful. Something seemed a bit odd to Dray, though. “Um … do Paladins usually do that, Uncle Groaney?”

“I imagine they do when there’s nothing else they can do to put reason in someone’s head.” Groaney folded his arms defensively at the question, always a staunch advocate of the Paladins, and then looked sternly down at the children. “So don’t you hassle him, or he might decide to do the same to you!”

Dray paled. Triptie frowned and said, “You’d hit him then, wouldn’t you, Groaney?”

“Well, I don’t know. Depends if you were being really naughty or not.”

Groaney chuckled and tapped Triptie on the nose as she began to scowl. “Now why did you two decide to break yet another rule today?”

“We were cold,” Dray said miserably. “I just thought we could start by cleaning some of the tables near the fire …”

“Cold!” Abruptly Groaney’s gentle frown dissolved into a look of consternation. “You silly little monkeys, why didn’t you tell me? Oh, look at you - you’re both still a little damp! Fie on my stupid old eyes! Go sit by the fire right now before you catch cold. And give me the rags.”

Dray and Triptie cheered in joyous unison, turned towards the fire, and froze nervously before they could both pelt towards it, their eyes falling upon the table where the lone stranger sat. Groaney just tousled his little nephew’s hair. “I was only teasing you before, my monkeys. Go sit by the fire - no-one who knows what’s good for ‘em will hurt you.”

They both nodded, but even fearless Triptie took slow, sidling steps as they threaded their way through the empty tables and took the long way around to reach the fireplace. There they sat with their backs to the crackling, stuttering flames, keeping their eyes on the stool-breaking stranger.

“Sorbin looks sulky,” Triptie said after a while, elbowing Dray. Dray looked towards the farmers’ table - rowdy Sorbin did indeed seem much quieter than usual, hunched over his tankard with a scowl, occasionally rolling one shoulder as if it still hurt.

Triptie shook her head in naughty admiration. “That’s pretty sparky, isn’t it? I wish I’d seen someone hit him with a stool!”

‘Sparky’ was an all-purpose word invented by the children of the town to variously signify ‘great’, ‘impressive’, ‘smart’ and also - confusingly - ‘stupid’ or ‘nasty’, as in the case of Triptie’s sparky broken leg of last summer. Dray, an expert in the use of the word, rightly concluded that Triptie meant ‘impressive/great’.

“Uncle Groaney doesn’t like it when there’s fighting,” said Dray virtuously, though he privately agreed with her.

“Sorbin always tries to fight. Serves him right!” Triptie spoke a little too loudly at the end, and hastily clapped both hands over her mouth when the sour farmer glanced in their direction and scowled at them.

Dray looked back towards the stranger’s table instead. “He’s got a sparky sword, too, if he’s a Paladin,” he said wistfully. “White. Glowy, probably.”

“Too bad he didn’t chop Sorbin into little bits,” muttered Triptie uncharitably. She didn’t take kindly to being glared at.

“You oughtn’t say that,” admonished Dray. He paused and sat in silence for a while, staring at the corner table where the Elf sat with his unseen, sparky sword. “You know, that Elf looks awfully lonely on his own.”

“Go over there, then,” Triptie challenged, blue eyes sparkling. “Bet you wouldn’t.”

Dray folded his arms. “I would! But Uncle said we weren’t to -”

Triptie folded her arms into chicken wings and started flapping them, making taunting chicken noises - that dreadful, unspeakable insult that simply had to be answered. Dray glared furiously at her, cornered, and then defiantly hopped up to his feet, striding off with a confidence he certainly didn’t feel.

“No, Dray, wait!” Triptie’s voice squeaked in alarm from behind. “I was only teasing -!”

Dray ignored her, his pride bruised, and took his last, increasingly hesitant steps up to the stranger’s table. The Elf turned his emerald-green eyes towards Dray again as he approached.

“Hello,” Dray said in a tiny, mouse-sized voice.

“Afternoon,” said the Elf in a casual, very un-mysterious voice.

All seemed well so far - no flying bar-stools yet. “I’m sorry we annoyed you before,” offered Dray, after a lengthy pause trying to figure out what to say.

“Annoyed? I thought it was rather snappy service to have my table cleaned while I was sitting at it.” Still lightly slouching in his chair, the Elf lifted a hand and pointed to the table-top. “You missed a spot there, though.”

“Um …” Dray eyed the spot nervously, then looked back up into the stranger’s crookedly grinning face. A wink confirmed it was one of those usual jokes that adults found so funny.

There came the sound of running feet on the sawdusted floor, and suddenly Triptie came flying up from behind, skidding to a stop beside Dray. Evidently she’d decided that if Dray was going to speak to an Elf, she certainly was too.

“Hello!” she hailed the stranger shyly, her confident, piping voice a few tones softer than normal, but otherwise unchanged.

“Afternoon!” replied the Elf, looking more and more amused by the moment.

Triptie eyed him for a moment, never long daunted. “Sooo … are you really a Paladin?”

“Yep, I really am,” the Elf said.

“Ooh! Prove it!”

“Triptie!” hissed Dray, elbowing her, but the Elf only grinned again. It made his eyes seem a little less strange and frightening - that was the same glint that danced in Uncle Groaney’s eyes when he chuckled.

“’Under all eyes you shall hold yourself proven, and prove yourself no more, excepting only each day to the blessed eyes of the Maiden ,’” the man said, deepening his voice for a moment. It didn’t quite sound like a serious tone of voice to Dray - more like he was making fun of someone.

“What’s that mean?” Triptie asked hesitantly.

“It means Paladins shouldn’t go around showing off for the sake of it.” The Elf sat up properly in his chair, raising one arm to pull back his travelling-cloak a little. “Pompous bunch, aren’t we?”

Dray stared captiously at the clothes underneath the cloak. With the Elf’s arm held out, they could see a white tunic - ruddy-orange in the firelight - and the faint gleam of half a silver star, four slim, shining points radiating from a hidden centre.

Triptie cast Dray a brief, triumphant look, then returned her attention to the Paladin. “That’s so sparky. Where’s your sword?”

“Let’s not be pushing any sort of luck, my skiplet. The fellow at the bar would probably be very upset if I started waving a sword around. I don’t wear it into taprooms, at any rate.”

“What’s ‘skiplet’?” asked Triptie, suspicious.

The Paladin raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “You don’t say that around here? I tend to lose track when I move around. It’s what they call children a bit further south. Tell you what - let’s move on to names, shall we? I’m Lórannon.”

“I’m Draylen,” said Dray.

“I’m Triptinna, from down near the dam!” added Triptie, going one better as usual.

“Pleasure to meet you.” The Elf gave a light, polite tug of his hood. “There, that’s better.”

“Did you really hit Sorbin with a stool?”

“Triptie!” Dray gave her a small prod. He’d been solemnly raised not to push girls, but with Triptie there was sometimes little choice but to gently bend the rules. “We should be asking about the monster lizard!”

Lórannon’s grin slid into a frown. “The what?”

“Oh, yes, the monster lizard!” Triptie said avidly. “We saw it today - it was awful! Groaney thinks it was an egg-lizard from over East, which is silly, because -”

“It was down at the pool near Jorbrey’s!” put in Dray. “We went climbing up on the north face, because there were a whole bunch of dead birds lying at the bottom - they usually nest up on the rock-shelves, you see - and Triptie went first, and then a big, black lizard with spiky scales and all these bristles popped out of a hole near the first ledge -”

“And it whacked me off the ledge into the pool!” cut in Triptie, determined not to have her thunder stolen. “With a long, spiky tail! And it went like this: eeeewk!”

“And I thought it had wings!” added Dray. “And it was very scary, like, scarier than the pig-cats we get in the forest, and when I tried to hit it with a rock for knocking Triptie off the ledge, it looked at me and made me jump off too, and I felt all cold! Really, I truly swear!”

“Nightdrake,” growled Lórannon, rising from his chair. The Elf’s face had become steadily more grave as the children spoke, and now he looked positively grim. “Lucky it hasn’t flown on the town yet if it’s that close! Where is this pool?”

Triptie gaped at the Paladin, unused to this alien phenomenon. “You mean you believe us?”

“I’ve been chasing that miserable lizard for weeks,” Lórannon replied bleakly. “And I’m going to make the damn thing into a pair of boots when I catch it. Where’s the pool?”

Dray opened his mouth, positively worshipful to find an adult who took them seriously, but then Triptie elbowed him hard in the ribs, silencing him. “It’s really tricky to find, Lórannon,” she said craftily. “We’d have to show you where it is.”

“Yeah,” agreed Dray, realising with a start that he’d almost lost them their chance to come and see!

Lórannon cast them both a long, piercing look with those emerald eyes of his, a look that had Dray squirming with guilt on the inside. But Triptie, as always, accepted all accusations with angelic equanimity.

“’S’true,” she insisted. Then she caught on to a thread of truth, and built on that happily. “Besides, even if you found the pool without us, you’d never know where to find the monster. The pool near Jorbrey’s is very big, and so’re the ledges where the shrikes nest.”

“I have a way of finding nightdrakes,” said Lórannon sternly. “But - with your elders’ say-so - you can come with me as far as the pool.”

Dray whooped in delight, but Triptie looked immediately crestfallen, causing Dray to realise his naivete. There was no way known that his parents would ever agree to that, and certainly no way that Triptie’s ever would!

… Unless they weren’t fully apprised of the facts …

With an innocent smile borrowed from Triptie’s own book, Dray elbowed Triptie to stop her moping and said, “All right. I can ask my uncle at the bar. Triptie’ll take you outside to wait while I go ask - I’m sure he’ll say yes.”

“The bartender is your uncle?” Lórannon asked bluntly. “I’ll ask him.”

Dray’s bright smile plummeted into a miserable grimace, and Triptie’s crestfallen look returned. Both stared at the Elf with mute, disappointed looks on their faces, the grief of tiny angels …

Lórannon watched their anguished faces in silence for what seemed an eternity, and Dray began to think that the Elf might be teetering on surrender; Dray’s dark brown eyes were especially famous in the town for being likely to coax sympathy from the Nightlord himself. But in the end it all seemed for nothing - Lórannon just turned, strode to the bar and had a few quiet words with Groningar, causing both of the children to slump in defeat and misery.

Then, after a brief nod from Uncle Groaney, the Paladin came walking back! “Come along, then,” he said.

“What?” squeaked Triptie in delight. “Groaney actually said -”

“- You could go for a little ride with me, yes!” Lórannon interrupted, shepherding them hastily towards the door. “Look lively, now, can’t waste the whole day!”

Triptie bit down hard on her lower lip, near-trembling with the effort of holding in her excitement, and let the Elf usher her out the door. Dray kept step beside her, and together they marched along, two happy soldiers, right up to the door and then outside.

“Yay!” Triptie shrilled, the barest moment after they’d emerged from the tavern to overlook the dusty main road. Fortunately the groaning of the ‘Prissy Miss’s hinges must have masked her outcry from Groaney. “The pool, the pool! This is so sparky!”

“I didn’t know Paladins could lie,” added Dray in a happy voice. If it was good enough for Paladins, what were his parents always scolding him for?

Lórannon looked shifty for a moment. “Yes, well, it wasn’t a lie as such, you’ll note,” he said defensively, making his way over to the hitching-rail. “Let’s just get to my horse. He’s the dopey one on the end.”

There were only half a dozen horses tethered at the rail, most of them the big, hairy-footed local draughthorses reared on mean Tebris’ nearby range. The carters’ wains were still hitched to four more horses, muscular Valley blacks with powerful forequarters built up from their work. But Lórannon made his way to the end of the rail, beyond the shaggy and the stocky alike, and began to untether a mount that stood out from all the work-horses: a tall, snowy-pale stallion, not as heavy-set as the draughthorses but still powerfully muscled, with a silvery-white mane and tail. He wasn’t an ordinary grey - he was a genuine Paladin’s white!

The stallion looked up mildly as Lórannon untethered him, and then turned a long-faced, mournful look on Dray and Triptie as they stood and watched in awe.

“That’s yours?” Triptie gasped.

“Oh, he’s anyone’s horse, so long as they’re holding an apple,” Lórannon said sourly. “But yes, Keminaré’s travelling with me until the next apple comes along - aren’t you, old boy?”

Dray put his hands behind his back timidly. “Can we ride, too?”

“What, with me?” Lórannon shook his head severely, patting a coil of rope tied to the saddle. “This is a Paladin’s horse, my lad. No, I’ll just have to tie you both to the stirrups and let you drag along behind.”

Triptie scrunched up her face disbelievingly, though she gave the rope a pensive look. Lórannon gave another Funny Adult Wink and then swept her up, settling her in the saddle before doing likewise for Dray.

“Now, this is going to be a bit squashy,” the Paladin warned. “No high speeds for us. Budge up as you can for me, all right?”

Once the two had shuffled up a little, Lórannon swung into the saddle behind them, gathering up the reins in one hand. Dray whooped as the Elf turned Keminaré’s white head and coaxed him into a smooth walk down the road. It was quite squashy, as Lórannon had warned, but it was still a much more comfortable gait for one’s behind than Dray’s rides on his family’s faithful old haycart-puller, Scarecrow.

“Now,” Lórannon said, from some way above the children’s heads, “let’s get our story straight, yes? If anyone asks, we’re just going for a little ride.”

“Oh, don’t worry, no-one’ll ask anyway,” replied Triptie breezily, holding on tight to Keminaré’s mane. “Just cut through out back of the foundry and we can sneak away from everyone who might say something - like my mother. We’ll show you where to go.”

“That sounds like a plan,” the Paladin replied with satisfaction. “I see I’m working with a pair of professionals.”

They carried on down the road at an unhurried pace, leaving both Dray and Triptie plenty of time to give a lordly wave to certain playmates they saw on the way. Hodey the baker’s son, who had sneered at Dray just the other day because he’d gone on a trip to Weston last week, now stood stewing in a deserving mire of jealousy as the magnificent stallion trotted proudly past the bakery, the fine image lessened none by the presence of a tall, white-clad Elf on its back. And Dray near-swooned with delight when spiteful Corstan from the Outreach Farm stopped in the middle of the street and gaped in furious envy at the sight of him and Triptie on the horse!

“This is sp-” Triptie began, about to impart the obvious descriptive, but her joyous comment was drowned out by a sea of sudden shouts as Mrs. Markell’s eight young children came tumbling out of their house to shriek in excitement and wave at the horse and riders. Triptie and Dray waved back vigorously, and Lórannon bowed to the children from the saddle as deeply as his passengers’ presence would allow.

“That puts paid to a quiet departure,” he observed dryly, as the Markells jumped up and down and rushed out to spread the word. “We’d better pick up pace just a little and get out of town soon unless we want an audience at the pool. The foundry’s that smoky building further down the road to the left?”

Dray nodded. Lórannon took the reins in both hands and cautioned “Hold on,” in a voice that drew a laugh of excited anticipation from Triptie. Dray locked his arms around Triptie’s waist, trying to turn his face away from her mass of curly red hair, and cast a last triumphant look back at distant Corstan.

“Ayale, Keminaré,” Lórannon said in an even voice, and touched his heels to Keminaré’s glossy flanks. Keminaré flicked his head a bit and quickened his pace, moving on at a livelier jog-trot.

It was fast enough to jostle Dray around a bit further from ‘uncomfortably’ towards ‘painfully’, but not quite fast enough to satisfy the little voice in his head crying go faster! As the town glided by, he daydreamed about charging down a hill on his own white horse - yes, Dray the Paladin, mighty slayer of monster-lizards and proud owner of a sparky sword …