FSE

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Chapter One

Rose spent all afternoon staring at the rain and dabbing paint on her new canvas. She liked the view from her bedroom, which overlooked the cobbled road between Riverside Artists' Cooperative and Gallery and a couple of small shops. The shops had cheerful striped awnings that contrasted beautifully with the gray day. Rose tried to convey the juxtaposition, but the more she worked, the more amateurish her results were.

After three hours the rain stopped and she gave up, cleaned her brushes, and went downstairs to the co-op's kitchen.

Honey had set her own easel by the kitchen window. She was in the way, but it was her building and she had started the co-op, so if she wanted to block the entrance and fill the kitchen with turpentine fumes while other dragons were trying to eat, no one would complain. Not to her face, anyway. Rose stepped over Honey's tail and settled at the big table.

Because Rose's room was directly above the kitchen, Honey was painting nearly the same view Rose had failed to capture. The canvas upstairs was a blurry mess of grays and blues that looked more like molten lead than rain. Honey's canvas shone with vibrant colors that evoked the rain-washed street.

Rose picked at the bowl of dried liver someone had left out. Honey made it look so easy.

"There." Honey shuffled back without getting to her feet. "I think it's done. What do you think?"

"It's perfect." Rose sighed. "I tried to paint the rain too and it's just a mess. How do you do it?"

Honey wiped her brushes on a paint-stained rag. "First you practice for fifty years, more or less. It'll come, Rose."

"Really? Because I don't seem to be making any progress lately."

"Try something new. Try a different approach. Get a traveling kit and fly somewhere--different views, different skies. You stay up in that room too much."

Rose paused with a piece of liver halfway to her mouth and thought about different skies. How odd that Honey would put it that way--but how exact. Just like the dabs of bright white in her painting that suggested light shining off puddles.

Different skies, new horizons. She'd always been a good flyer, had even been on the team in school. Artists often traveled to keep from getting stale. It would do her good.

Honey finished with her brushes and scrubbed paint from her paws with a rag. Her soft gold-brown hide gleamed in the light streaming through the window. "Who's cooking tonight?"

Rose tossed the liver back into the bowl. "Who cares? Honey, I'm going to travel the world!"

***

Of course it wasn't that simple, not once Rose thought it over. It was still winter, rainy and chilly. Besides, she needed supplies and more money.

She discussed it with the others while they ate--elk stew with carrots, made by May, who was the only one in the co-op who could really cook.

"It's exciting." Elm was the biggest dragon Rose knew, and his mottled green-brown hide made him look like something that lived under a hedge. He ate hunched over with his tail curled around his feet like a cat. "We ought to hold an exhibit of your stuff before you go."

"I need to get some canvases done first." Rose sopped up the last of the broth in her bowl with a hunk of bread.

Honey said, "Do a series of pre-travel pieces. We'll drum up interest by telling everyone they're the last pieces you'll have available for--how long?"

"I don't know. Spring and summer at least."

"Say six months. That sounds like a good long time."

"You could have a baby in six months," Blossom said, and laughed. "Will you fool around?"

Rose thought the question was in poor taste. She just said, "I need to buy a travel kit and fly to different places nearby to paint, get back flying fit."

"Good idea," Honey said. "You can have my old kit if you like. I never use it anymore."

"Really?" Rose forgave Honey for painting in the kitchen. "I'll be careful with it."

"Use it, that's all I ask."

Blossom, predictably, didn't let the thread of her thoughts drop. "It wouldn't be that fun to fool around while you're traveling, actually. Not unless he went with you. You'd have to wait out your egg months without him, and what if you found someone more interesting in the meantime?"

May, a pretty pink with brown dapples, said, "It could be awfully romantic, though. Think of it, Rose. He sees you in an exotic marketplace and falls for your beauty. You spurn him, he pursues you across the country, groveling--"

"How will he grovel while flying," Blossom said, "and why would Rose spurn him?"

"Because he's plain, but he has a heart of gold. Finally he wins your heart and the two of you join in love, twined together under the full moon--"

"May," Rose said, horrified. She couldn't look at Sable, who was sitting right next to her. "Do you mind?"

"But if it's a pure love and true, there's no shame," May said, eyes wide. You couldn't argue with her, that was the problem.

Rose grabbed more bread. "I'm going abroad to paint. I will not be twining about with anyone."

"In the moonlight," Blossom said, drawing out the word until it sounded filthy.

"Shut up, Blossom. You started this," Rose said.

May cocked her head, a birdlike trait that would look contrived on just about anyone else. "Well, it would be awkward to have an egg somewhere foreign. Who knows what their hatcheries are like? And if you wanted to keep the baby, of course you'd be stuck another month until the egg hatched and you could bundle it up and fly home with it."

Rose discovered she had mashed the hunk of bread in her paw until it resembled dough. "I am not going to have an egg, don't be absurd. I'm going to paint and paint and paint. Honey, can I look at your travel kit? I want to gloat over it."

Honey ducked her head in a nod, an amused twinkle in her amber eyes. "Come up with me and help me find it."

***

Rose spent the evening packing and repacking her paints and brushes into the travel kit. The rain blew off, revealing a starry night sky that promised a glorious winter's morning to follow. She had trouble sleeping.

She woke just before dawn, packed the kit again with a small fresh canvas, and strapped it on. It buckled around her waist, just behind where her wing leathers attached to her sides, which meant the kit itself snugged against her lower belly. She tried to adjust it higher but it wouldn't go. She would just have to get used to it.

The eastern sky blushed pink as she leaped from her window. She stretched her wings and felt them cup the air with every powerful downbeat. She felt invincible.

She flew above the buildings and roads of Whitefall. Elk-drawn wagons made deliveries far below, and the first commuters flew from home to office with lunch sacks dangling from claws. Rose coasted over the broad flat roof of the city's hatchery and then she was above farms and pastures.

She flew on and on as the sun rose. Farmland gave way to forest; here and there a road or stream snaked through the trees. She flew above the village of Foxbury, rustic and charming from above, and angled her wings to descend.

Rose had only been to Foxbury a few times, but she remembered a humped stone bridge that crossed a narrow river. It would be a good subject to paint. People liked that sort of thing and it would sell if she did a halfway decent job.

The sun was well up by the time she dropped to her feet in the town square. As always after flying any distance, her first steps felt clumsy and slow.

Her wing muscles trembled with such unexpected exertion. Her mouth was parched, she was starving, and the thought of the flight home filled her with dismay.

She stepped into a café and bought tea and ham rolls. They were so good she stayed in the café for the next hour, sipping tea from a porcelain bowl and sketching the view from the window.

She returned home late, a decent but uninspired painting in the travel kit. She dumped the kit in the corner, burrowed into her nest of blankets, and fell asleep almost immediately.

In the morning she was so sore she could barely make the short flight to the nearest bakery. She walked back with the bag of pastries held in her teeth.

Honey met her in the kitchen. "Tired?"

Rose dropped the bag on the table. "Worn out. I think I might have been a little too ambitious."

"What did you paint?"

"Foxbury's bridge. I'll show you."

Rose trotted upstairs and retrieved her canvas, the oil paint still gleaming wetly. It wasn't bad. Nothing to be ashamed of, yet for some reason she was.

Honey examined it for several minutes without comment. Rose tried not to squirm. Finally the older dragon said, "It'll sell, of course. Quite a nice subject and you chose a good angle. You do a good job with light; that water looks real."

Rose didn't respond. She knew what was coming next.

Honey continued, "It's boring, though--a safe painting. Even your brushstrokes are safe. You control the brush so carefully the brushstrokes are short and cautious."

"I've never been good at painting quickly," Rose said. "I never like the results."

"Perhaps you haven't tried often enough. Next time you go out, make the sky your subject. Bring several canvases and paint as fast as you can."

"All right." Rose stared at her safe painting and felt like a hack, a greeting card artist. Even Elm, who specialized in saccharine studies of eggs, had a genius way with light and shadow that lifted his work above its subject.

"I'll do better," Rose said, and wondered if she could.

***

The next day was Rose's day in the shop. She was secretly glad, although she complained about it at breakfast. "I wanted to fly today. I'm going to do some sky studies."

May cocked her head. "Just the sky or a landscape too?"

"Just the sky, I think."

"You should paint the sunrise. I've never been able to get it right, myself."

Despite May's cutesy mannerisms and wide-eyed innocence that sometimes verged on disingenuousness, her paintings were dark, ferocious, and beautiful. Rose sometimes wondered at the contrast. As far as she could tell, May's only goal in life was to get into the city's breeding program--yet she clearly had hidden depths or she could not paint as she did.

Sable speared a piece of ham on a claw and contemplated it as though he'd never seen ham before. "Paint a storm."

May said, "The rain would ruin her canvas."

"Well, I can't do anything today," Rose said. She ducked her head to glare at Sable. "Don't play with your food."

He saluted her with the ham and crammed it into his mouth all at once. May giggled. Honey yawned.

The weather was fine and they had new paintings in the gallery, so a number of dragons stopped in to browse. A young couple, the female so round Rose worried she would lay her egg in the middle of the shop, spent an hour picking out a painting for their new house. The male wanted one of Elm's more treacly paintings, of a sleeping dragon curled around her pearly egg; the female admired May's latest, a dragon either swimming or drowning in a turbulent river. Both expressed horror at Sable's display.

Rose finally said, "We offer a ten percent discount if you buy more than one painting," and they bought both.

When they had gone, Rose went around the shop herself and examined each piece that showed the sky. Honey's skies were quick dabs and blobs of paint, gray and white and blue. Elm's were super-realistic, with clouds lit as though from within. May's were slashes of color that suggested the sky without being particularly sky-like--Rose wondered how May knew she could not paint the sunrise. Maybe she had only been making conversation. Blossom's paintings were mostly claustrophobic interior pieces; her only skies were slices of blue or gray glimpsed through windows.

Only one of Sable's pieces showed the sky, and of course it was a churning mass of storm clouds. An abandoned egg lay in the foreground, beaded with rain. Just looking at it made Rose anxious. That was the point of Sable's paintings, of course. He liked to disturb and horrify the viewer. He rarely painted dragons, only eggs: eggs abandoned, cracked, smashed, or in some sort of peril. His gallery showings were always packed with dragons who wanted to glimpse the notorious artist, and Sable lurked in the background looking dangerous and saturnine. People wrote angry letters to the papers about him. Yet Sable was kind, never bragged about being in the breeding program, and was always the first to help out with any bothersome chore.

People were strange. Artists were strange. And Rose could not think of Sable without longing in her belly, which was embarrassing since he wasn't interested in her.

The next day she made herself fly to the hills south of Whitefall. She found a hill remote enough that she could paint in peace, unpacked her kit, and looked up at the sky to decide what colors she needed for her palette.

It was a windy day and clouds were moving in fast. It would probably rain by evening. Rose stared at the clouds, noting the way they changed and moved. She studied the colors of the sky, the way light pierced the clouds and shone on the hillsides below. She sniffed the wind. When it grew chilly she wrapped her wings tightly around herself.

The morning drew on. Rose ate her roast elk sandwich and drank her flask of water. Clouds covered the sky and they were different than before, so she continued to watch them. Occasionally she picked up a tube of paint but always put it back down.

Late afternoon brought the first spit of rain. Rose packed up the kit without having painted a single stroke, and flew home.

She felt it had been a productive day.

***

She dreamed of clouds that night. When she woke at dawn, she grabbed the travel kit before she even visited the latrine.

She flew to the same hill as before, but this time she didn't hesitate. She prepared her palette so quickly she lost the cap of one of her paint tubes in the grass. She screwed a piece of paper over the opening to keep the paint from getting everywhere. Then she selected a wide flat brush--different from her usual favorites--and looked up at the sky.

Dawn was not far advanced. Flat-bottomed clouds shone pink and gold against the dark western sky, while the eastern sky glowed with sunrise. The scene changed from moment to moment as the light grew.

Honey was right. Rose could not paint the sky in her usual manner. It was not a rustic bridge or a rainy street that would stay put while she made each meticulous stroke.

She jabbed her brush into the blue with short, nervous motions, dragged a little white into it, a touch of yellow.

She painted.

Fifteen minutes later she blinked and drew back from the canvas. She was breathing so hard she might have been flying instead of painting. The canvas was a sky--not perfect, certainly not her usual clean look, but energetic, atmospheric, and undeniably a sunrise.

She had brought another canvas, but she packed everything away carefully and returned home in time for breakfast.

"Back already?" Honey glanced up from chopping an apple.

"Yes. What do you think?" Rose unbuckled the travel kit and opened it to reveal the painting clipped in place.

Honey abandoned the apple, the bacon blackening in the pan. She looked at the painting closely, then stepped back to look again.

Finally Honey said, "It's very, very good. Well done, Rose. I knew you had it in you."

Rose slumped to the floor in pretend exhaustion. "Thank goodness."

"The hard part will be keeping up that looser style. You'll need to practice until it's second nature."

Sable wandered into the kitchen, his golden eyes half-lidded against the morning light. "The bacon's burning. Who painted this? You, Rose?"

Rose scrambled to her feet, embarrassed. "Yes. This morning. Don't touch it."

"Of course not," Sable said, and Rose was embarrassed again. Sable knew better than to touch a fresh painting. "I like it. Not your usual style."

"I'm trying to branch out. That's the whole point of traveling."

"Maybe you won't need to travel after all."

Behind them, rescuing the bacon, Honey said, "It's important to follow through on these things," as though she knew Rose was already regretting her decision.

***

Rose fell into the habit of flying every morning. It was a chore at first as her body protested the sudden activity after years of indolence. Soon, though, she found she missed her dawn flight if she had to skip it.

She lost the chubbiness around her middle that had bothered her for months. She could gallop up the stairs without puffing. By the time the silverbirds returned, heralding early spring, Rose could fly for hours without tiring or feeling battered the next day.

Painting was more difficult. For two weeks she painted nothing but skyscapes, at least one a day. Three of them Honey judged good enough to put in the shop, one Rose liked so much she matted it and hung it in her room. But when she tried to use the new fast style for painting anything else, she ended up with an amateurish mess.

"Don't try figures yet," Honey said. "Trees. Individual trees, forests, things like that. See what you can do with them."

Feeling as though she was back in school, with the old dread of inadequacy, Rose painted trees.

They bored her. They did not change like the sky, just sat there. Her paintings were lifeless. Honey made suggestions but nothing Rose tried made a difference.

She was trying to paint the cedar in the co-op's small weedy yard one afternoon when Sable stole up behind her. He moved so quietly that Rose didn't even know he was there until he said, "You might make it look menacing."

Rose jumped and dropped her brush. "You scared me!"

"Sorry. That tree's menacing. See how dark it is and the way its branches are crooked like claws?"

"Not really. It's just a tree," Rose said, sullen from being startled and unable, as always, to say the right thing when talking to Sable.

"If you think that way, you'll never be able to paint it--or anything else."

Rose wilted inside at his quick dismissal of her abilities, even while she agreed with him. "How would you do it, then?" she said with ill grace.

Sable nudged her aside, sending her stomach fluttering. He smelled musky in the warm afternoon. Sunlight slanted into the yard, making everything bright and flat with hard-edged shadows. Sable's black hide gleamed with iridescence like a crow's back.

He painted over her uninspired mess. With his attention focused on the canvas and the stupid tree, Rose looked him over without fear of him noticing. He was more fit than she remembered and she wondered if he too had been flying. The black horns arching back from his head gleamed with oil.

"Here, see? The tree has a personality if you give it one. It's not just a tree."

Rose stopped admiring the muscular curve of Sable's haunches as he crouched at the easel. His painting was only roughed in--his usual style was deliberate and it usually took him weeks to get a piece the way he wanted it--but even so, the cedar brooded on the canvas. It had presence.

"It's good." Rose looked away. She would never get it right. Worse, she suspected she could not go back to her old style of painting. She would never be able to paint anything but skies.

Sable put the paintbrush in her paw and curled her fingers around it, his own fingers warm on hers. Her heart hammered. "Now you try. Want a clean canvas?"

"Yes. I brought some. I mean, they're in my room but I meant to bring them--I'll get one."

"I'll get it. Be right back."

His wings nearly buffeted her as he sprang into the air. She felt the power of the leap, saw the dead leaves fly from his first downstroke. She stared after him.

Flirting. He was flirting with her. With her.

He returned a moment later and set the fresh canvas on the easel. "Go."

She looked at the tree without seeing it. Sable was flirting with her. Sable was in the breeding program and was called on to mate at_least_ once a month with some of the most beautiful females in Whitefall. And he was flirting with her.

Light shone on the cedar, which turned it into shadow with barely a gleam on its spiny needles. The bark was scaly and the whole tree bristled.

Sable saw menace, but Sable saw menace everywhere. Rose noticed the patches of light and shadow in the tree's dark greenery. It reminded her of the patchiness of clouds in bright sunlight.

She jabbed at the palette. Green, blue to deepen the green, a little yellow to highlight; a slash of red in the branches, nearly hidden in the muddier shades of brown. Funny she had never noticed how much like clouds tree branches were. Only the colors were different.

She stopped and looked at what she'd painted. The tree had come to life in less than ten minutes--still an unfinished canvas, since she had not bothered with a background, but as vibrant as her previous attempts had been dead.

Sable stared from the painting to her and back. Rose swallowed.

"You are very talented," he said quietly. Then he stood and flew away.

"Thank you," Rose said, although he was already too far away to hear.

Chapter Two

For the next week Rose did nothing but paint and fly, fly and paint. Blossom took her shop day, an unusually kind gesture until she said that evening at supper, "Of course you'll take one of my days before you leave."

"When are you leaving?" May asked.

Rose admired the colors of the food in her bowl: pink ham, yellow and brown cornbread, green beans. "Mm? I don't know. I haven't decided yet." Her dinner would make a good still-life. She was running low on canvases; she would need to gesso over some of her old ones.

"Hadn't it better be soon?" Blossom said. "Someone make her eat. Elm, make her eat or she'll stare at her food all night."

Rose took a bite to stop Blossom from commenting further. "After the new year."

"How soon after?" Honey poured herself more water from the jug.

"A week? I really don't know." Rose wanted to stay home and keep painting. Besides, her new paintings were selling much faster than her old ones.

"Maybe I should stay after all," she said to Honey the next morning. Honey was an early riser and Rose had become one so she could paint the dawn clouds as often as possible.

The morning was overcast and windy. Honey was setting up her easel in the kitchen to paint the coming rain, but she stopped and turned to Rose. "No. You're not done."

"But--my new style."

"You've taken a jump in the right direction but you're _not_done. What you're doing now is good, sometimes very good, but you still have to find your depth."

"I can do that here." Rose fidgeted her tail against the flagstone floor, an old habit she had broken years ago. She thought of Sable, who had been avoiding her all week. She wanted him to keep flirting with her. She didn't want to leave.

Honey drew herself up and arched her neck. Rose crouched down automatically, cringing in apology like a hatchling caught doing mischief. "Finish what you start."

"Yes. All right. I'll buy a guide book." Rose slunk out of the kitchen.

She seethed as she flew across town. Honey wasn't Rose's mother. She should leave the co-op, found one of her own across town and become a rival. That would show Honey who had depth.

"Rose! Slow down!"

Rose backwinged and turned her head to look behind her. May was thrashing through the air, jaws open as she panted.

"Sorry, I didn't know you were following me," Rose said when May caught up.

"I saw you leave and thought I'd join you, but you're so fast." May's pale hide shone in the dawn light. "Where are you going?"

"To buy a guide book and a map."

"You've already passed the nearest book store."

"I thought I'd go to the excursion shop near the river." Rose had only just thought of it, but it seemed like a good idea after all. "I need a pack."

"It's so exciting! I'd like to travel, but if you leave Dayrill they won't consider you for the breeding program for a full year after you come back. That's what Sable said, anyway."

The river came into view, curving through the low hills. The streets below were blurry with fog. Rose and May banked and circled to lose height, then dropped to the street.

The fog beaded Rose's hide with moisture, which made her itch. She rubbed her sides with her wings.

"Ugh, I'm starting to molt already," May said.

"Me too." Rose pushed through the double leather flaps across the doorway and entered the shop.

The tables inside were heaped with goods. Old maps papered the walls, which gave the shop a musty bookish smell. Rose looked around and felt her interest spark.

"There are packs over here," May said. "What sort are you looking for?"

Rose followed her to the trestle tables. "Something big enough to hold the kit Honey gave me."

"These are on sale."

A mottled brown and white male joined them. "You're looking for a backpack? We've got some new ones over here. This is my favorite type; I have one like it."

May giggled and glanced sideways at the clerk. He was attractive, Rose had to admit--lithe and muscular--but she thought of Sable and there was no comparison.

The clerk showed her how to fit one arm through the loop, then settle the pack between her wings before putting the other arm loop on. "Let me load some books in it so you can see what it feels like full. What do you think?"

"It's comfortable." Rose sat back on her haunches and flapped her wings, stirring the maps pinned to the walls. The pack stayed put, and the arm loops were supple rolled leather that would not chafe. "Let me look at some of the other ones before I make a decision."

She ended up buying the pack, along with a guide book to the Southern Lands and a detailed vellum map. Rolled up, the map fit neatly into a pocket built into her new pack.

"Where are you traveling?" the clerk asked before she left.

"Everywhere."

***

The backpack excited everyone. It was too small for Elm even after Rose let the straps out all the way, but everyone else tried it on in the yard.

Honey stretched her wings and shook them with a leathery slapping sound. "Very comfortable. I wish I'd had something like this when I was your age."

"You traveled?" Rose said.

"Three months along the Stekkan Mountains. I thought you knew." Honey took the pack off and handed it to Blossom, who wriggled into it. "I went with two friends, Amber Whitetail and Oriole Sky. We sold paintings as we went to pay our way."

"Oriole Sky! I've heard of her," Blossom said, looking up from adjusting a buckle.

"Oh yes, she got quite famous for a while. She's fallen a bit out of favor but she's very good. You should visit her, Rose. She met a male in North Stekka and stayed with him. Amber and I continued our travels but Oriole is still in North Stekka as far as I know, still painting the same mountains."

Sable turned his head sharply to look at Rose. She pretended she didn't notice. "I'd love to meet her."

"I'll send a letter of introduction with you. I can't remember her mate's name, and we fell out of conversing years ago. I know they had children but of course they'd be grown now. I can't believe it's been so long." Honey stared into the sky as though looking at something else entirely. Her hide looked dull in the sunlight.

May said, "Perhaps you'll find a mate while you're gone, Rose."

Sable was still staring at her. Rose still didn't look, although she felt he was drilling holes through her with the intensity of his gaze. "I'm not looking for a mate. I just want to improve my painting and see the world."

"That's what Oriole said too." Honey sat down and scratched her side with a hind foot like a dog. "Ugh, I'm molting."

"It's the heat," Elm said. "Early spring, early molt."

Blossom leaped into the air, sending dead leaves flying. She circled the cedar twice and thumped back down, slightly winded. "I like it. Maybe I'll go with you."

Rose could not think of a dragon she wanted to travel with _less_than Blossom. "You'd need to get fit in the next month, if you can," she said unkindly.

Blossom laughed. "Not likely. Try it on, May."

"The straps will make me itch."

"Itch now, itch later--we all itch during molt," Blossom said.

"Itch and bitch," Elm said, and everyone laughed.

Elm was right, although really spring was no warmer or earlier than usual. Within three days they were all scratching and complaining.

No one got any real work done and the shop had almost no customers. The papers were full of the usual advice, from sandbathing to drinking extra water; every store put up big signs advertising anti-itch oils and creams. Nothing helped.

Rose had to make herself go out for her morning flight. Doing anything during molt was awful, even eating, although once she was in the air she felt better. Landing was another thing. All the itching she did not feel with the wind rushing over her hide returned with a vengeance once she was on the ground.

On the fifth full day of molt, when the misery was at its peak and no one was even pretending to be nice anymore, Rose decided to fly all day. She forced down a few mouthfuls of meat gruel, then launched herself out the kitchen door. It was raining.

Seven hours later she returned, her wings so tired she let them drag on the floor once she landed. She had flown directly into her own room, intending to drop onto her blanket and rest. But she needed food first.

By the time she was halfway down the steps, the itching reached such an unbearable pitch Rose wondered if she would actually die. She heard a stream of muttered swearing from Elm's room as she passed it, a few despairing whimpers from Blossom's.

May was in the kitchen. She'd tied a white dishcloth around her muzzle like the Silent Nurses who thought infection was carried on the breath. She was sweeping up drifts of molted scales, but stopped and stared when Rose came in.

Rose stared back. May's usual freckled hide was grayish, with molting hide hanging in shreds. Her gold eyes were round and frantic with misery above the dishcloth.

Rose's own hide was beaded with rain, which made her look slightly less awful. She tried to fold her wings and had no energy to do so. Every inch of her body was an endless agony of itching--an itch no scratch could satisfy, an itch that killed appetite and murdered sleep.

Her half-eaten bowl of gruel sat where she had left it that morning. It had congealed into a rancid-looking brown mass.

Rose ate it anyway, gagging it down all at once. She looked at May, still staring, and gave a wordless, birdlike screech. Then she dragged herself upstairs to her room.

Chapter Three

Gradually the itching abated. Last year's dead scales shed in earnest, revealing patches of lovely new hide. Rose no longer dreaded stopping flying. Elm and Honey cleaned the kitchen, and Rose went shopping and brought the groceries back in her pack. It was so nicely balanced she scarcely noticed the extra weight.

The newspapers proclaimed in huge letters, as they did every year, "IT'S OVER!" Sable emerged from his room for the first time in almost two weeks. Rose supposed he must come out sometimes, if only to use the latrine, but if so he made sure no one was around.

They all had lunch together outside: half a roast elk that Honey had ordered delivered that morning to celebrate. They lay it on a cheery green oilcloth and gathered around it to gorge themselves like vultures. Daffodils and white illil flowers bloomed along the edges of the yard, birds sang, and the sun gleamed on clean new hide and crisp markings.

"We all look very fine," Honey said when everyone's hunger was sated and the elk was reduced nearly to bones. "It's worth the itching."

"You say that every year, and every year I disagree," Elm said. "I look the same anyway."

"You're gorgeous," May said, and made a show of looking him over. Elm arched his neck and gave her a flirty glance from the corner of his eye. Blossom snickered.

The mail arrived--newspapers and the small blue envelopes the breeding council used, summoning Sable to his breeding appointments. There were a lot of them this time, enough that he shuffled them into a little pile and sat on them with an embarrassed glance at Rose.

Blossom grabbed one of the newspapers. "Keeping you busy, aren't they?" she said to Sable. "You won't have the energy to mate with anyone of your own choosing."

"I always have enough energy."

Rose pretended she had not heard the exchange, but inside she seethed. Trust Blossom to make a play for Sable during the one time of year he would find her interesting.

Not that Rose wanted to start her traveling on a mating restriction. The restriction had recently been lowered to seven weeks from eight--amid huge controversy--but it was still a long time to wait between partners. It would be different if she was staying home, of course. She and Sable could be together as often as they liked. But she didn't want to wait seven weeks during her travels. She might meet a fascinating male and have to tell him no.

She didn't intend to look for a male on her travels. But she wanted it to be a possibility, although she would not admit it to anyone.

Honey said, "There's unrest in South Stekka, Rose. Are you going there?"

"I haven't decided. What sort of unrest?"

Honey folded the newspaper page back and read aloud. "'A royalist movement in Sather has caused upheaval in recent months. Elected officials have received threats and several public buildings have been damaged by fire. Rumors that the hatchery will be targeted next has caused panic and near riots, with hatchery guards being demanded.'"

"I'll try not to be elected to office while I'm in South Stekka," Rose said.

"Maybe they'll make you their queen, like in the olden days," May said. "You'll come home wearing a golden chain."

Elm had taken part of Blossom's paper. "The Detail is predicting a record number of new year babies this year. They're running a contest. If you guess the number of eggs laid three months from now, you can win a chicken a day for a whole year."

"I don't want to eat nothing but chicken for a whole year," May said.

Blossom shook the page she was reading. "Forget chicken, I've found the best article ever written. 'Please Your Mate with a Novel Position.'"

Honey laughed. Rose said, "The Detail is obsessed with sex."

"Aren't we all?" Elm shrugged his wings.

Blossom said, "There are drawings and everything. Rather good artwork, actually. It doesn't say who did it."

They crowded around to look at the drawings. They were good, and definitely arousing. May said, "They ought not to put those in the paper. It's coarse. Ooh, look at that one. You'd have to be awfully limber."

Honey said, "Clear skies, that makes even me want to go to the fair."

"You're not that old," Rose said. "You ought to go. Find yourself a handsome new year's stud."

"Maybe." Honey stepped over Sable's tail. "I thought the council capped males at six a month. You've got seven envelopes here."

Sable gathered up the little envelopes and sat on them again. "I'll look at them later."

"Check them now. If they've overbooked you, you need to let them know right away."

Sable muttered something that sounded like "Bossy," but he flipped through the envelopes. "Oh. This one's not mine."

"Better fly it to the post office so they can get it to the right dragon," Honey said.

"No, it's May's."

He handed the envelope to May, who gave a little gasp of excitement. "It might be a no again," she said, "but those come in white envelopes."

"Open it!" Blossom shouted.

May did. "Oh! Oh, oh, oh, they want me on a trial basis this year! My first appointment is next week."

"Congratulations," Rose said with as much warmth as she could muster, even though she couldn't imagine wanting to be in the breeding program. But May was clearly overjoyed.

Blossom said, "How awkward if your first appointment was with Sable."

Sable scrambled to open all his envelopes so he could compare appointment times with May. "No match. Not that I wouldn't be delighted, of course," he said with a courtly nod.

Only Elm didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about May's triumph. It must be hard on him, Rose thought, to almost have her only to find her snatched away at the last moment. He would have to visit the fair himself for new year's, unless he intended to make himself miserable by abstaining.

Blossom waited until a lull in the conversation to announce, "The breeding program is an antiquated relic of a stratified society. It should be banned."

They all looked at her, startled. May said, "Anyone can apply these days." She sounded hurt.

Elm said, with as much anger as he ever showed, "Where did you memorize that, Blossom? There wasn't a single 'fuck' in the whole sentence."

Everyone snickered, even Blossom. Honey pointedly changed the subject.

Later, after they'd gone in to start the spring-cleaning Honey insisted on, Rose said to Blossom, "Males have it easy. They don't have to wait seven weeks between partners."

"They don't get to carry eggs, though." Blossom wiped a soapy rag along the stairs while Rose scrubbed the kitchen floor. "Have you noticed how obsessed males are with eggs? Much more than females are. Eggs are just a part of life for us, but to males they're sacred."

It was the first time Rose had heard Blossom say something that indicated she had a brain under the sarcasm and gossip. "I hadn't noticed it, but I think you're right."

"I bet Sable's a pounding good fuck, too. All that practice. I'm going to save that newspaper article so I can try every one of those positions with him."

Rose glared. Blossom tipped half the dirty wash water down the stairs, where it pooled in a spot Rose had already cleaned. "Oh, and I need you to take my shop day this week. You owe me."

***

Honey took spring cleaning seriously. They closed the shop for three days of hard work cleaning, repairing, and painting the co-op building.

As always when it was done, Rose was proud of the results. The place shone and everyone could find things: favorite brushes, sponges, scissors, canvas nails. Rose gessoed over all her old unsold paintings. Only the Foxbury bridge escaped the slaughter. She hung it next to her favorite sky painting as a reminder.

They rearranged the gleaming shop last, rotating in paintings reserved for the new year crowds. Honey had already had a lot of advertising flyers printed, and Sable hung them around town on his way to and from breeding appointments.

To Rose's mingled shock and pleasure, the flyers featured her work this year. "Prominent local artist Rose Blackthorn's last new work before she leaves for a tour of the Southern Lands."

She was really leaving, and she could not possibly return for months--not when Honey had essentially told everyone in Whitefall she would be gone.

"Let's see what you've got," Honey said when Rose brought her latest canvases in. "That's a nice stack. Let's go through them now." She flipped through the canvases briskly, giving each a practiced once-over and moving them into piles. "These are the best. We'll put whopping great prices on them and get you some traveling money. These are quite good, and these are weaker but still worthy. We'll put sale prices on them. I guarantee they'll all end up on student walls for the spring semester."

After that Rose spent the evening matting her canvases so Honey and Blossom could hang them in the shop. Sable had left matting to the last minute too and they worked side by side at the kitchen table. Rose tried to concentrate on her work instead of being distracted by Sable's musky scent and his nearness. He probably already had someone lined up for the holiday. Hopefully not Blossom.

Rose was tempted to spend the week with Sable, if he would have her. She thought he would. Images of what they could do together kept intruding on her concentration.

"This razor blade is getting dull," Sable said.

"Oh, stop talking. I'm losing my mind!" Rose said. After that they worked in sullen silence.

At last the mattes were all in place. Honey affixed discreet squares of cardboard to the backs, with prices and other information printed in her impossibly neat script.

"That's it. Ready for dawn," Honey said after another half hour. The shop looked phenomenal. Rose and the others crowded inside, admiring one another's paintings and making last-second adjustments.

Rose dragged herself upstairs to her room when the group broke up. She was worn out but so nervous about tomorrow's big sale that she was certain she wouldn't be able to sleep.

The night was mild. Rose lay on her newly washed sleeping blanket and listened to an owl hooting from the cedar in the yard.

She shouldn't have snapped at Sable, but perhaps it was for the best.

She still wished Sable would visit her room to return a brush or ask a question. He would be struck by her beauty, overcome--would take her in his wings and whisper his passion.

Rose fell asleep and had interesting dreams.

Chapter Four

The new year's sale started at dawn and continued until almost midnight. By the end of the day, everyone was staggering with exhaustion. For once Rose got almost as much attention as Sable, with dragons stopping to ask her questions about her paintings, her plans for the future, and her trip.

She realized quite soon that she had to supply details of the trip or it would sound false--a marketing gimmick. She would be despised. By the time they closed for the night, she had worked out a reasonable itinerary just from talking to potential customers.

The shop walls, so crowded that morning, were much barer now. Rose had sold all the paintings Honey had pronounced as weaker, half the average paintings, and quite a few of the expensive ones. She had been offered a commission, a first for her, but turned it down politely because of her trip. She recommended Sable to make up for snapping at him the previous night.

"We have made out like bandits," Honey said once the shop door was locked behind the last customer. "Cold chicken casserole in the kitchen. Eat up. You'll need your strength tomorrow."

They all laughed as they settled around the table. Tomorrow was the fair, and after that everyone would be busy mating.

Rose thought about the fair while she ate. It was a light-hearted festival in the daytime, with children running about, awful food, ridiculous games, overpriced stalls full of things no one needed but everyone bought, and music. As evening progressed, it became more and more raucous. Those who wanted to choose a mate spent time milling about, flirting in a way that would be outrageous any other time of the year. There was a matchmaking service run by the hatchery to raise funds, and a raffle to bid for particularly attractive mates. By midnight it was guaranteed to devolve into an animalistic spectacle. Inhibitions fell so low that couples would mate in full view, drawing crowds of voyeurs.

"I'm leaving for my trip tomorrow," Rose said. "I'll have the sky to myself."

"Everyone else will be fucking," Blossom said agreeably.

It was another mild night and they all retired to the courtyard after eating. The first fireflies of the year blinked lazily under the cedar, and from the neighbors' yards Rose heard laughter, talk, and distant music. The smell of grilling meat drifted on the breeze.

It was all so impossibly perfect that Rose was struck with nostalgia. She might be like Oriole Sky and never return home, staying instead in a foreign land until its customs seemed normal and the new year's excitement felt like a long-distant dream.

She excused herself and murmured, "I must pack," but instead just stood at an upstairs window and looked down at her colleagues. She would miss them. How dear were their foibles and insecurities, how vast her gratitude for their friendship. She had never told them how much they meant to her.

She retrieved a canvas and paints from her room and set up an easel in the hallway. She didn't intend the painting to turn out good--she might never show it to anyone--but she would keep it to remember this night forever.

In the last few months Rose had worked hard to develop a quick hand, an open style that suggested as much as it showed, but this painting needed a different approach. She smoothed purples and blues onto the canvas as the sky, roughed in the silhouettes of trees and buildings in the distance. The cedar was easy to paint now--she felt it was an old friend. The yard's weedy cobbles were barely visible in the dim light, so she painted a gray-blue background with dark and pale highlights to give the impression of texture. Finally she turned her attention to the figures. She could paint dragons but rarely did, and as a result she doubted her ability to render them as well as the landscapes she preferred.

She painted Sable first, lounging near the cedar with his tail curved in an elegant half-circle. Elm and Blossom lay close together, muzzles nearly touching as they talked. Rose wondered if Sable had turned Blossom down or if Elm had approached her first. Honey and May sat together, May gesturing with one wing as she told a story Rose couldn't hear from the upstairs window.

The figures turned out well, even May with one wing extended and her jaws open as though in laughter or song. Rose paused with her brush over the canvas, about to dab a highlight on May's back. Would that overdo it, look amateurish and awkward? The pose was a difficult one to pull off. Better to stop painting before she ruined it.

She dabbed the highlight on after all. Yes, that looked good. It made May's hide appear to gleam in the starlight, implying a fresh molt.

That reminded Rose to add stars, bare pinpricks scattered across the sky. The brush picked up the background pigment as she painted, so some stars appeared dimmer than others. Lastly she added a few small details to the background shapes, just enough to make them seem better realized.

She was panting when she finished. Oh, skies, it was good. It was_really_ good. She added a few greeny-yellow dots beneath the tree as fireflies, then signed her name in the corner.

The painting was far different from her usual work. She hoped she would not wake up in the morning and hate it.

She set the easel in the corner of her room while she cleaned her brushes and put them away. She was mostly packed already: the painting travel kit, her guide book and map, a small blank journal Honey had given her, rolled-up blanket, toiletries kit with toothbrush, claw file, and oil for her horns--not that she bothered to oil her horns ordinarily, but she might as well make a good impression while traveling. Her water flask was already full and she had some dried meat and oatcakes in a waxed leather pouch for emergencies.

She had put most of her money in savings, carrying enough to make her first few weeks comfortable. She hoped to sell paintings to pay her way most of the time. The rest of the pack was full of blank canvases.

She lay down and closed her eyes. This time tomorrow she'd be far away, hopefully in a clean hostel somewhere. She planned to fly all day and find a reasonably large town in early evening where she could get a good meal. She could reach the Stekkan Mountains within a week if she flew directly there.

She jumped up and wrote a note, tilting the paper to catch more light from the window. The moon had risen. "Honey, you can sell this one for whatever you think fair. Call it 'New Year's Eve.' I love you all. See you in a few months. -Rose"

She wriggled into her pack and settled it along her back between her wings. Then she leaped from the window and winged into the night sky.

Chapter Five

Rose's wings cupped the night air as though she had never set foot on land and was instead a creature of sky, like the white swallows that only landed to lay eggs. Every wingstroke carried her away, away, away--into a future she couldn't imagine but could hardly wait to experience.

Within an hour she was flying over patched forest and farmland, all dark under the thin moon. She flew directly toward the nearest border, the little country of Inkle, but she would need to fly for hours to reach it.

For the first time she wondered what on earth she'd been thinking. She couldn't fly all night. It was absurd.

She fretted over the question for some time. Then she encountered a small, warm updraft that lifted her into a tailwind, and the glory of flying absorbed her again.

So be it. She would fly all night and cast herself onto the ground like a vagabond poet in the morning. At least it would make a good story to tell later.

Another hour passed, then another. Rose's eyes kept trying to close. "I should stop," she thought repeatedly. "I should land and sleep." But she didn't.

She dozed on the wing, as she had heard long-flying explorers did while crossing the ocean. That would be terrifying--not sleeping on the wing, which turned out to be quite easy although not very restful--but flying over water with no opportunity to land for days and days.

After another hour, Rose had grown so wretchedly tired that she couldn't make decisions at all. She dithered at the thought of stopping to sleep, or just to relieve herself. Her entire existence seemed tied to this night flight. The moon had set and there were no lights anywhere except the stars. She felt she was the only dragon left alive.

Then, without her understanding why at first, her spirits lifted. Her energy returned.

She noticed a faint paleness to the eastern sky. Dawn was coming! Suddenly jubilant, she cleared her dry throat and crowed the morning prayer as she had not done since childhood. She wasn't religious these days, but the approach of dawn after a long, exhausting night seemed miraculous as it never had before.

The sky lightened as she flew, revealing little clouds in rows. They lit up pink from underneath as sunrise approached. "Fair today, rain tonight," Rose thought.

When the shining rim of sun showed above the horizon, Rose crowed again and sang the morning prayer. As she did, she winged above a huge field of flowers planted in the shape of a flag.

The Inkle flower-flag! She had seen pictures, of course, since it was famous, but she had never seen it in person--and at dawn when she had the sky entirely to herself!

The flag was made of illils, an evergreen plant that bloomed year-round in various colors. She marveled at how many thousands of the plants there must be to make such a large flag, and marveled too at the knowledge that the entire border of Inkle was planted with such flags.

She flew on, growing increasingly hungry. "I'll stop at the first town," she thought, and imagined the lavish breakfast she would order.

There were farmhouses below, singly and in little clusters, but nothing Rose would call a village. She saw a few dragons out and realized she was still flying extremely high--the dragons were scarcely dots far below. She dropped out of the obliging tailwind that had carried her through the night. Some of the farmhouses grew their own small flower-flags, although the pink square in the middle was usually fairly sparse. Perhaps that color was difficult to breed.

Rose thought, "I am now ineligible for the breeding program for at least a year."

It was surprising what a relief that was. In the honest morning light, with no pressure from anyone, she realized her contempt for May's breeding program aspirations stemmed from her own feelings of inadequacy.

She would probably be a good candidate for the breeding program. She was educated, talented, successful, and not bad looking. She even had a stripe of the rare coloration known as royal red down her spine, although it was barely visible against her dark pink hide except just after molting. It might be nice to have match-making done by the breeding program, a guaranteed attractive and skilled mate every few months.

She'd never produced an egg before. She wondered how it would feel to lay one. She'd heard it hurt, and lugging the growing egg around inside you for three months sounded dreadful too.

"I don't want an egg," Rose said out loud to herself, annoyed at her train of thought. "I just want art."

She noticed another homemade flower-flag below, this one larger than most and well-kept. It was close to a handsome farmhouse with a big kitchen garden out back.

The view would make a wonderfully rustic painting, but it needed to be painted from above. It would be difficult.

A stand of tall pines was in just the right place, which seemed like a sign. She swooped down and landed in the top of the biggest tree.

It bore her weight easily in its springy branches. She felt heavy after flying so long and exhaustion swept over her.

"Oh, stop," she said out loud. "You did this to yourself."

She unbuckled her pack and hung it on a branch, then took her painting kit out and wedged it securely in another branch. The sharp smell of pine filled her nostrils, which made her even more hungry than she already was.

She spent a few moments sketching the scene with charcoal, making sure to get the angles of the flower-flag, the farmhouse, and the kitchen garden just right. Then she made up her palette quickly.

It was a different type of landscape than her usual work, more like last night's painting of her friends. She painted the sky first, and although the sunrise was well over she gave the clouds a hint of pink. She dabbed in green to suggest trees in the distance, then roughed in the farmhouse.

It was wood and stone with a shingled roof, varied textures that were fun to paint. She tinted the roof very slightly pink where it caught the morning light. She had a bit of trouble getting the ground right--she couldn't quite mix a shade of green that indicated spring growth--but didn't want to fuss over it too much. It would do. The flower-flag was the most important element anyway.

She wasn't completely happy with the painting when she finished. She wouldn't want it in the shop, but it might be good enough to get her breakfast.

She cleaned her brushes on a rag, packed her kit away except for the new painting, and put her pack back on. Then she coasted down from the tree with the canvas held carefully in her claws.

Before she even landed at the back door, it opened. A leggy female hatchling with lemony hide looked up at her with her wings mantled in surprise.

"Hello!" Rose said brightly, feeling awkward as usual around children. "Are your parents about?"

"Yes," the girl said. She turned her head. "Mum! There's a visitor!"

Mum looked like an older copy of the girl. "Are you lost?"

"No, I'm traveling. I'm an artist." Rose's awkwardness deepened. She must sound demented. "I painted your flower-flag and I thought you might accept it in payment for breakfast?"

She shoved the canvas at the pair. To her relief, both of them went "Ooooh!" in the same admiring tone of voice.

"That's fine! Look how lovely it is!" The mother reached for it.

"The paint's still wet. Don't put your thumb in it or anything," Rose said. "It'll take a week or so to dry."

"Come along in and have breakfast with us. You can tell us all about your travels. Oh, I'm Goldenrod. This is my daughter, Spring."

"I'm Rose." Rose came into a large, comfortable-looking kitchen with a long table in the middle. "Can I help with anything?"

"No, no. It's just a scratch meal, I'm afraid. We're going along to the fair soon."

"I'm happy with anything. I'm ravenous."

Goldenrod set the painting carefully on a shelf over the sink, first moving a teapot and a vase of yellow illils to make room. It did look good, Rose thought--not her best, but certainly not hack work. She would paint a new version later when she had more time and a more comfortable seat than a tree.

Spring obviously approved of Rose and grew talkative. "You can sit here," she said, pushing Rose toward a particular spot at the table. "That's where guests always sit. This is my place." She sat across from Rose, then jumped to her feet again and retrieved a threadbare cushion from the corner. It boosted her up enough to see over the table properly. "My brothers are still getting ready. They're loopy about the fair. I'm going to win a prize in the duck race. I almost won last year but I got water under my wings and it slowed me down."

Rose had no time to ask what the duck race was because Spring continued almost without breath, "I'm going to eat ever so many petal cakes. Do you have those where you're from? They're _so_good! The pink ones are my favorite but Larch says they all taste the same. I think he's wrong but we're going to try one of every color with our eyes closed and see if we can guess. Larch is my best friend. He lives at the Amberly farm. We're in the same year at school but I'm in the advanced reading and he's only in the regular."

Goldenrod, patting out dough at the counter, said, "Larch is in advanced maths and you're not."

Spring shrugged her wings to show the world how unimportant this was to her. "Well, I'm a better flyer than he is. I'm going to win the duck race."

"What's the duck race?" Rose asked at last.

"Oh, it's so fun! It's along the river, at the big bend where it's not so deep, and there are ever so many dragons who enter and last year I came in fourth out of everyone my age. I think I'd better wait to eat petal cakes until after the race. I don't want to feel heavy."

Rose was no wiser about the race but before she could interrupt to ask for more details, she heard the thump of hasty feet on stairs and two nearly grown males burst into the kitchen.

"Hey, hey! A stranger," one said, immediately stopping to strike a pose.

His brother pushed him out of the way. "Get out. I'm starved. Morning, Ma."

"This is Rose," Goldenrod said. "She's an artist. Look at what she painted!"

The boys exclaimed over the painting, although the older one kept giving Rose smoldering looks. It was embarrassing. Rose was glad when Goldenrod said, "Quartz, don't be a pest. Set the table."

The boys' father entered a few moments later, which meant Rose was introduced all over again. The painting was duly admired and, finally, Quartz--who was a mottled gray-brown--brought her a bowl of water. Rose downed it in one grateful gulp, earning a chuckle from him. He refilled it and she made herself only sip even though she was still thirsty.

Goldenrod brought a huge basket of fried dough to the table. "Don't overstuff yourselves. There'll be fair food."

"Yes, petal cakes!" Spring said, grabbing three pieces of dough.

The fried dough was plain but good, slightly sweet and slightly salty, fried to perfection with a crusty outside and tender inside. Rose savored every bite.

Once everyone's first hunger was sated, Goldenrod said, "Where are you from, Rose?"

"Just Dayrill," she admitted. "I was too excited to start my travels and set out last night. I reached Inkle at dawn."

"That's some first-rate flying," Quartz said.

Goldenrod clucked her tongue. "Did you sleep at all?"

"A bit on the wing," Rose said. "I had a good tailwind."

She did her best to answer questions about travel when this time yesterday, she'd breakfasted at home. It struck her as absurd that she should be in this strange kitchen eating fried dough with people whose names she could barely keep straight.

"Are you going to the fair?" Spring asked.

"I hadn't really thought about it," Rose said. "I suppose I might."

"Oh, you ought to!" Spring started talking about the duck race again, but her mother shushed her.

"Come with us, if you like," she said. "It's a bit of a flight but I'm sure you'll think it nothing."

The father, a dragon of few words, gave a rumble as he cleared his throat. "There's an art museum. Free today."

"Oh yes," Goldenrod said. "I've never been but it's supposed to be quite a nice museum."

Rose thanked them, interested in seeing the art and finding a tactful way to separate herself from the family.

Once the meal was done, Rose thought they would set out for the fair. But it took forever to get underway. Everyone had little day packs to carry things in but somehow the children's packs had vanished even though Goldenrod said in an exasperated voice, "I told you to put them by the door. Spring, you had yours on last night. Where did you take it off?"

Spring's pack eventually turned up in an outbuilding where, she said with great surprise, she must have been having a tea-party with her dolls. Goldenrod made her turn out the three dolls, which were homemade from various-colored cloth and showed a great deal of wear. One was missing a wing and looked close to losing the other, while another was leaking stuffing from its belly. It was disturbing, although Rose remembered her own dolls always looked similarly disheveled despite her love for them.

Rose was ready to tell the family goodbye and wing off to some distant land where there were no children when at last the party was ready to go. The younger ones rose into the air with Goldenrod calling to them to "stay within earshot or you'll be sent straight home." The parents flew slowly but Rose felt it was only polite for her to stay with them.

She gathered that a trip into town was a rare treat and assumed it was quite a distance away. To her astonishment, even at the slow pace the adults set, it was only half an hour before a good-sized town came into view along a broad, placid river.

Finally, Rose stood in front of a two-story stone building with "Riverton Art Museum" carved above the door. The family called their goodbyes and Rose waved until they flew off toward the fairgrounds on the other side of the river.

Rose entered the museum, passing brightly colored signs that read "Free Entrance Today!" and "Happy New Year!" She hoped it wouldn't be too crowded.

To her pleasure, there were more guides in attendance than guests. It was a bit sad how excited the guides were to see her. "Happy new year!" they all said as she went from room to room.

The art was a modest, varied collection. Nothing really stood out--there were no famous names among the artists--but it was tastefully displayed. Rose spent a few hours studying it all and was enormously pleased to find one of Honey's pieces given pride of place in the "Modern Masters" hall.

She finished at the gift shop where she bought a pre-stamped postcard, a little metal badge with the museum's logo, and--feeling that she should spend more--a box of assorted candies. She pinned the badge to her pack, dropped a few coins into the donations box, and left the museum.

She heard music and voices in the distance along with the smell of grilling food. It was time to visit the fair.

Chapter Six

The duck race, to Rose's delight, turned out to be a race just above the water where entrants had to pick up and set down carved wooden ducks in what amounted to an obstacle course. It was hilarious to watch, with plenty of midair collisions ending in both dragons falling into the water. Rose made sure to watch the under-tens race and cheered when Spring came in second.

Rose also ate one of every color petal cake and agreed with Larch that the flavor was always the same. The cakes were good, though.

There were plenty of tea stalls and Rose slurped down many bowlfuls to help keep herself awake. She kept yawning. She sampled lots of other fair food too, watched several musical performances, and looked at all the stalls but managed not to buy anything.

By then it was afternoon and despite the party atmosphere, she started feeling melancholy--and irritable from the noise and commotion, music and talk. She desperately wanted a nap somewhere quiet. Things would only get worse as the afternoon progressed into evening, too. Already it was getting hard to avoid the heavy-handed flirting from males who didn't interest her, although she made sure to decline with the light-hearted traditional phrases.

She decided it was time to leave Riverton. The map and guide book she carried barely mentioned Inkle so she would need to find out where the next town was. She wanted somewhere too small to have a raucous fair but big enough that she could find a hostel or tavern with a free room.

After a bit of searching she found the Inquiries tent and got in line. It seemed like an unusually long wait, and when she reached the front she realized she'd gotten in the queue to sign up for a race.

"Name?" the attendant asked, pencil poised.

"Rose Blackthorn. Wait--I only wanted Inquiries."

"Next table over. Are you entering or no?"

"What race is it?" Rose asked, feeling stupid with tiredness.

"Adults' two-league." The attendant sounded impatient.

"Oh. All right," Rose said, too embarrassed to back out.

"It starts at four under the big clock." The attendant gave her a cloth number to wear around her neck.

Five minutes later, Rose had a hand-drawn paper map to a nearby town. She wanted to leave immediately but didn't know what to do with the cloth number. She made her way to the big clock--it was unmistakable, an ugly monstrosity of stone blocks with a clock face at the top.

A lot of lean, athletic dragons were milling around already, cloth numbers around their necks. Rose wriggled her way through the crowd, trying not to notice how attractive a lot of the males were, until she found the race attendants.

"Where do I turn my number in?" Rose asked.

"We'll take it after the race, don't worry," the attendant said.

"I don't really--"

"If you'd like to stow your bag behind the desk, we'll keep an eye on it for you."

Rose decided the race was an inevitable part of her day. "Thank you," she said.

As soon as she shucked the bag off, she felt much lighter and cooler. She hung the number around her neck--she was 26--and retreated to the edge of the crowd to stretch her wings.

A few males followed her. "You look like you'll make a good showing," one of them said, mantling his wings to show them off.

The other said, "I haven't seen you in the racing circuit before. Are you from out of town?"

They were both impossibly gorgeous. One had a pale brown hide that seemed to glow with health, the other was green-gray with darker stripes ringing his tail.

Rose thought, "I'm going to act foolish, I know it. I shouldn't have stayed."

Flirting with two at once on new year's was a bit awkward, since males became so single-minded that they literally didn't acknowledge other males, but there were traditional responses to deal with the situation. And flirting on a sunny new year's afternoon was an unexpected pleasure. Rose felt her irritability and weariness melt away.

The head race steward, a granite-colored older female with a no-nonsense air, called everyone together. "Hind paws on a starting block," she shouted. "Number thirty, hind paw on a starting block."

In the scramble, Rose lost track of her two would-be suiters. She placed her right hind foot on the peaked cobble sticking up from the ground. It was made of sandstone and had been worn smooth by other paws over many years.

She glanced around at the other dragons waiting for the race's start. How sleek and lovely they all were! Their eager expressions and alert attitudes made them look similar although they were all different sizes, shapes, and colors.

Would this make a good painting? It wouldn't really work with her style, but she would sketch it later in her travel journal so she could remember the moment.

The red starting flag slashed down while Rose was still admiring the other racers. She was the last to push off from her starting block. She surged into the air amid the glorious slapping of wing leathers all around her.

Once she'd gained height, the cloth number fluttering against her chest, she settled into her usual pace. It only took her half a dozen wing strokes to leave the other stragglers far behind and catch up to the main group.

The river flashed by below. A warm updraft from the park brought the scent of grilling meat to her nostrils.

She saw a tower in the distance with a red flag flying from its flat roof. That must be the midway point, approaching fast. She had never pushed herself, did not know how fast she could really fly.

She pumped her wings, a skimming stride to row herself through the air like a swallow. Her speed increased, the wind a constant roar over her ear membranes. She shot to the front of the crowd with only half a dozen front-flyers ahead of her. By the time she reached the tower, she'd passed two of them.

Two race stewards were perched on the roof between shallow paint trays. Rose pushed herself, dragging air deeply into her lungs and through her bones, but couldn't quite outdistance #17, who was a female the same pink of a rare illil.

Seventeen smacked her right paw in the red paint tray, then used the stone blocks edging the tower to stop herself and immediately push back off for the return flight. It was elegantly done, Rose had to admit.

Half a wingstroke later Rose reached the tower too. The stewards had already whisked a cover over the red paint tray but had removed one from a yellow tray. Rose slapped the paint with her right paw so energetically it splashed, although the tower roof was a riot of colors from hundreds of races.

She backwinged hard, the chalky smell of tempura in her nostrils, and twisted her body so her hind legs met the stone railing. She pushed off again, rolling in midair to right herself--not as elegantly as #17, and requiring another skip of her hind legs on the roof to help find her balance. Then her wings cupped the air again and she soared toward the distant clock tower above dragons still toiling for the paint trays.

Yellow was good. She'd get a ribbon no matter where she finished. But it would be lovely to actually place.

Seventeen had gained two lengths on Rose, her red-paint paw just visible against her side. Rose set herself to beat her.

One stroke, two, three, and Rose edged ahead of #17. The two front-flyers were both males, including the ring-tailed male Rose had spoken to before the race. She did like ring-tails. She would catch up to his, maybe fly close enough that it would dance across her hide as they flew.

Panting, ravenous with a sudden lust deeper than any hunger, Rose closed the gap between them. She barely noticed when she passed the other male.

The park, the river, the ugly clock tower, the cobbled square with a purple paint tray. The ring-tail was #19 and his right paw was purple. He'd been first on the half.

With a grunt of effort, Rose edged him out and hit the purple tray with her left paw an instant before he did.

They collided, tumbling apart in a spattering of paint. Rose had a moment of confusion, then fear for her wings as she bounced off the cobbles. But flying skills bred in a dragon's very bones got her back in the air without conscious effort. She backwinged and skidded to a halt on all four feet.

She blinked in surprise. "Move, move," someone shouted over the roar of spectators. A race steward waved a wing at her urgently at the edge of the square.

It was #19 who tugged her forward, away from the next landing dragons. He hurried ahead of her as they neared the block fence, one wing brushing her back and his tail sliding along her side.

He looked back at her, his eyes dark with passion.

"Do you live nearby?" Rose asked him.

Chapter Seven

As soon as the medals were awarded, a double purple for #19 and a single purple for #26, they headed to his apartment. Rose nearly forgot to retrieve her backpack.

He was ushering her into the small but clean bedroom when he said, "Oh, my name's River."

"I'm Rose." It suddenly seemed absurd that they hadn't yet introduced themselves. She laughed, which started him laughing too--the sort of laughter that left them helpless and giggling.

The room smelled of pine cleanser and an intensely male dragon. Rose let herself drop to the freshly scrubbed floor, where she looked up at River. "We're getting paint everywhere."

"I'll get the sponge."

He retrieved a big sponge and a towel from the washroom and stood over Rose a moment, the tip of his tongue just showing and the sponge dripping water down his empurpled arm. He was so adorable that Rose started giggling again.

He sat next to her. "Allow me," he said huskily.

He stroked the paint off her with the sponge, then let her clean him. At one point he murmured with approval, "Royal red," which made her laugh. The stripe of fine red along her spine wasn't as interesting to him as the pale pink of her belly, though. Soon the sponging turned to nuzzling and the sponge and towel lay forgotten.

Rose breathed his musky scent deeply, feeling as though every inch of her skin was hyper-aware of his nearness. His breath as he rubbed his muzzle along her belly sent shocks of desire through her body.

They both froze for a long moment, his mouth just above her vent. She'd kept her vent closed out of habit at first, then effort. No sense rushing things, no matter that she felt all her insides were a glorious fire focused around her vent, and there was only one way to quench the flames.

Slowly, delicately, River slipped the tip of his tongue between the folded edges of skin. Rose gasped.

He lapped her gently, sending pulses of pleasure through her. He lay alongside her, his own vent not far from her head. She moved just far enough to lick the bulge of soft white scales.

River made a sound somewhere between a moan and a whinny. His cock surged out of his vent and up her tongue, hot and hard, and she rubbed it against the ridged roof of her mouth until he cried out and tightened his claws on her hips.

He said in a strangled voice, his words muffled against her belly, "I can't last much longer."

Rose moved her head away so she could speak. "Wriggle around, then. I want you in me."

River stood, his cock waggling ridiculously below him, red and wet, and settled across her hips. She felt the hardness rub along the base of her tail until it reached her gaped vent and slid inside.

Rose wrapped her arms and wings around River and pulled him close. They were both panting. She clenched around him and laughed breathily as he whinnied again. He thrust into her, stoking her fire until she thought she would burn him, and when he released and filled her, she lost herself in the pleasure.

They rested afterwards, exhausted, wrapped in each other's wings. Rose fell asleep but woke to the gentle scrubbing of a freshly wetted sponge along her belly.

"Bright skies," she breathed, astonished at how quickly the fire kindled in her again. "You're as good a lover as you are a flyer."

River chuckled and pressed the sponge against her vent. "Do you realize we're both still wearing our medals?"

It was late when they were both spent. They slept, although Rose woke briefly a few times at the sounds of laughter, voices, and music from the street below.

Overall, Rose thought as she shifted more closely to River in the coolness of the night, she'd had a very good first day of travel.

***

River had stocked his larder well, which was good since they did little more than eat, sleep, and fuck for the next three days. They only left his apartment once the first day, to walk through the nearby park and listen to birdsong. Somehow they found themselves hidden inside a prickly evergreen bush, coupled together while trying to smother their giggling.

By the end of the third day, their ardor was cooling. Rose spent part of the evening bringing her journal up to date and writing a postcard home before River nuzzled her under the jaw. She set her things aside for another mating session, but it was more perfunctory than passionate. She was tired of feeling sticky and longed to stretch her wings.

"I'd better leave in the morning," she murmured to River.

He stirred. "It's been lovely. I'll take you to breakfast first."

They breakfasted at a nice restaurant full of similarly parting couples. The water bowls were decorated with white flower petals to symbolize eggshell fragments. Rose wondered if she'd lay an egg in three months.

They registered at one of the corner stands and Rose was given a card to turn in at the hatchery with her egg, if she laid one, so the baby's father would be known. Then she and River said polite goodbyes, as though they didn't remember what each other's bodies tasted like.

Rose looked back as she lifted above the buildings in the chilly morning. She could barely make out River's form among the dragons passing up and down the street. Then he was hidden from view by buildings.

Rose flew higher, into the pale blue sky, and angled toward the mountains she knew lay far to the southeast.

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