Going out for a picnic. (Drawing + Short Story)

    “When I was a whelp, the water terrified me!”

    Savel stopped, turning back to look at the wyvern following at his heels.

    “Strange now, I think,” he continued, “an aquatic being terrified of the water, but I was, was…” The drake trailed off, lost in thought, before murmuring something unintelligible to himself and turning away. “I-I can’t remember why… too long ago.”

    Evet watched him, waiting patiently; counting the seconds off in her mind. In the six weeks that she had been living in the Frether Valley, which sat some seventy miles east of Merkok, she had become an astute observer of this creature. His behavior, words, and emotions - all were presided over by her.

    Such was the way of a student of alchemy and medicine.

    It made her think of the glib, human and kobold artists of the city who had sought out creatures such as herself to paint. Many a time had she posed for them when she had resided in the academic district of Merkok, and though their lofty mannerisms were, at times, wholly annoying, they had paid her many a coin to simply pose and look fierce, relaxed, or joyous in front of their canvases. The way they studied her form, she imagined, was much akin to the way she now studied the figure of Savel. Yet for her, this study was not of his muscle structure or lith profile - regardless of the few times she had caught her eye wandering to the latter - but rather, a study of the mind.

    This mind was not bright and readable like the composition of those paintings. It was obscured; an enigma among the beings with which she had interacted all her life. To her, Savel wandered beyond all normalcies of the average Gavamonian.

    “It will come to you, just give it time.” she called to him.

    He stood still, looking out across the rolling landscape, towards a large stand of distant cedars.

    “What makes you think that?” he questioned, stretching his wings, and edge of melancholy creeping into his voice.

    Good question, her mind said.

    “Negativity isn’t the way to go about things, Sav. You’ve gotten this far, haven’t you? Besides,” she added, smiling, “I’m not leaving this place until someone other than you tells me to, and I am handed my coin. I figure that will be enough time for you to remember all sorts of things.”

    Her sensitive ears picked up a faint chuckle, and her smile turned to a grin.

    “Yes, it’s not a bad place… not one I want to leave yet. Why, I do believe it to be quite pleasant.” Enunciating her words heavily, she feigned a pompous elvish accent. “Save only for a certain overgrown whelp that I have to keep track of, this can be quite enjoyable for me. I would hope that it is as enjoyable for you.”

    The drake laughed; an authentic laugh, not one of the curt chuckles he so often put forth. It made her happy to see his mood brightening. So odd were his fluxuations in demeanor - some days emerging from his chambers bright and talkative; some days quiet, angst-filled, and reserved; and some days still refusing to even emerge from beneath the pillows and blankets he slept upon. Those latter days were, fortunately, becoming fewer and farther between. There had been only three of them in the past week, and unlike the first week she had spent at the estate, he was no longer a stranger to her, and she no longer a stranger to him. She was now quite comfortable around him, and would recline on a pillow and read aloud to the drake. It was clear that her duties of simple stewardship to the place and its one lowly inhabitant had been overshadowed by a blossoming friendship the two shared.

    Today, though, was a happy day. Savel appeared content at breakfast, if not just a bit lethargic. No matter; mornings were an ongoing struggle which would be managed. In many ways, he was like a big whelp, often playful and cheery towards her. Strange thing to behold, this: a drake some two years older than herself, yet whom she viewed much akin to that of a younger sibling, or even - to take it to its greatest extremes - as her own child. Protective and caring in nature, the sympathies that she held for him flourished in the days since first meeting the creature, and in meeting with the dignified members of his family when asked to care for him, it was no stretch of the imagination to figure that she was perhaps the only being in all of Gyvel who held anything but embarrassment or disdain for Savel.

    Such thoughts made it hard to get over the fact that, if ever returned to a state of something resembling normalcy, she would likely never enjoy his company again. Even after what had happened, he still bore the surname Kergaas: the most powerful merchant dynasty in Merkok. He would be granted a lordship, married off to a purebred daughter of another powerful house, and placed in charge of some small, unimportant plot of land drawn up on a map. Out of sight, out of mind.

    She sighed, watching him saunter slowly through the alpine grasses, causing grasshoppers and moths to spring up and away as he went along. The tip of his tail was wrapped firmly around the handle of a large picnic basket, which swayed gently as he moved. Giving a few quick bounds, she caught up to him, once more disturbing the moths and grasshoppers.

    “Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Evet purred, giving him a playful thump on the flank with her tail.

    “Somewhat, yes.” he laughed.

    “Somewhat? Sav, I would rather we not get lost.”

    “Don’t worry; I know my way around -- somewhat. My sisters and I used to spend summers here with our aunt and uncle. Their son was the wildest creature I’ve ever met! He claimed to be the best racer south of Gavamon-” The drake paused suddenly, and gave a tremendous sneeze. “Gah! This damn grass always does this to me!”

    “We’ll split some Dierris root when we get back, that ought to help.” She said, having also been feeling a persistent itching in her throat, and chastised herself for not thinking about that beforehand. “Now, about this cousin?”

    “Yes, Harroth is his name. He knew every secret there was to know about this valley - the caves, forests, streams - everything. If you said you were impressed by the hot springs near the house, he’d take you to these ones that are high up a mountainside, where the water is hotter and the view is much better. I only ever went in that water once, though.”

    “May I ask why?”

    Savel grinned wolfishly. “Where do you think a slick racer would bring the females he impressed at the courses?”

    “Oh God!” Evet exclaimed, blushing beneath her light blue hide. “He didn’t, did he?”

    “Just imagine the shock on our sixteen-year-old faces when my sisters and I flew up there one afternoon, only to discover that Harroth and two of his female acquaintances had beaten us to it.”

    This time, they both laughed, his matter-of-fact tone only adding to the utter hilarity of it.

    “Anyway,” the drake continued, attempting to calm himself, “there’s an underground river that flows along the base of those cliffs out there -” He gestured to the looming wall of granite in poking out above the trees across the meadow with his wingtip, “- and Harroth somehow found a place where it came to the surface. We went there almost every day during those summers. On hot nights, I would sometimes even sneak out for a quick swim there. It’s not that long of a flight, but you’ll never find it if you don’t know exactly where the trail is. It’s quite nice walking, though.”

    “Ha, maybe for you, Forepaws!” she jabbed, “Us wyverns aren’t so quick on the ground.”

    It was truer than she’d like to admit. They had been walking for more than an hour, and her wingarms were already becoming sore. The way he gracefully bounded along upon his black fore and hindpaws was just one of the many moments within her life that made her wish she was a proper dragon.

    “You’re quick in the air, though.” Savel commented, his voice softening. “I’m always amazed at how nimble you are up there. You wyverns don’t give yourselves enough credit.”

    His words were both heartwarming and profound. She had never considered herself a talented flyer, and, when she did take to the skies in order to go run errands, she attempted to do so as discreetly as possible. She could only imagine how torturous it must be for Savel, whose broken wingarm was still healing. The idea of him watching gave her pause.

    “Gryphons; now they are truly terrible flyers.” He paused, glancing at the point on his wing where the break occurred. The large, catfish-like whiskers on his snout twitched. “But right now, I suppose they would laugh at the dragon who can’t even leave the ground.”

    “Sav..”

    His eyes shifted from the wing to her.

    “Remember what I said about not being so negative? You’ll be up there with my in no time. With a little practice, we’ll be able to go to the market, or the ocean-”

    “Or Merkok.” Savel growled.

    Evet swallowed. “Yes… or Merkok, I suppose. I could take you to meet some of my professors at the Nevgal, I’m sure they’d like you.”

    “Hrmph.” was the only reply she received.

    A raven swooped overhead, calling out to its kindred. On one of the glaciers high above, she could just make out the crumbling edge of a serac.

    “It’s strange, being out here,” she said after a minute of silent walking, “so much different than what I am accustomed to.”

    The two glanced at one another, and their eyes met for but a moment.

    “What are you accustomed to?”

    “Arches.” she murmured, “Arches and domes and cobblestone. I’d barely done any swimming since I moved to Merkok, and before coming here, I’d never really seen the mountains. To be honest with you, I didn’t think I’d like this place. I don’t quite know how to put it into words...”

    For all her studying on how to coerce others to express their inner feelings, and how to interpret them, she realized that never had she pondered over her own, nonetheless tried to express them to someone else.

    “Nature, I think, is only seen in its true divinity by a lucky few.” He spoke in a soft, far-off voice, as if deep in thought.

    The words were jarring coming from Savel. This was an aspect of him that she had only witnessed once or twice before: Savel the philosopher. They were words that she knew would, late that night, be written down in the small, leather bound notebook she kept hidden away in her chamber.

    The two soon reached the edge of the forest, and Evet sat for a rest in the last vestiges of the meadow, thankful for the shade above her head. Her northern heritage was not well suited for this high summer heat, nevermind the altitude, and her forked tongue hung limp from her maw as she panted.

    Nature, I think, is only seen in its true divinity by a lucky few. It was that sort of thought process that separated the poets of the world from the academics. Living in the city as she did, Evet had always assumed that she was the latter. Aqueducts, promenades, and columns were the quintessential aspects of the urbanscape, and the notion of the pastoral or wild state of the natural world was something that architects were apt to be dismissive of. They would point to what was once the northern city of Gyvel as an example of how nature was the enemy of progress, or argue that the perfect curvature of a domed building was far superior to the uneven organicness of the wilderness. Though the architecture of the city was, without a doubt, impressive in scale, she wondered how it could ever compete against the sheer complexity of the poet’s earthly landscape.

    “Ah, right here!” the drake called, rousing her from her quiet musings. He stood farther down the treeline, near a large boulder. “Not far now!”

    Still tired, she slowly got her paws beneath her and approached him. However hot and muggy the day may get, she was still happy to see him become so enthused about something. Despite often going on short walks with him, until this day he had barely spent an hour out of sight of the house, with its red, curving roof and stone chimneys poking above the stand of gnarled maples which guarded it like a garrison of sentries. Naturally, she was surprised to hear him propose going ‘on an adventure’ that morning at breakfast.

    “Here,” he said, gesturing towards the thick underbrush before him, “follow me.”

    With that, the big drake disappeared into the tangle of low-hanging branches; the flora swallowing him up like a pool of quicksand. After a moment’s hesitation, Evet followed, closing her eyes to protect from the onslaught of twigs. Before she had gone three paces, she broke through the barrier and headlong into the smooth, leathery hide of Savel, who sat waiting on the other side.

    Gods, it made her feel clumsy.

    Yet before she could apologize, he leapt up, twisting his body in mid air and bounding off into the mossy forest.

    “Hey, don’t leave me here, stupid lizard!” the wyvern called, giving chase. She was a dignified, well educated creature; one that was nearing her twenty-seventh nameday. Her scholarly peers - feral and bipedal alike - would scoff at such behavior. Yet in that moment she no longer cared. The only beings that would bear witness to her reversion to immaturity were squirrels, birds, and a drake who lived in an almost constant state of immaturity. What on earth was there to be afraid of?

    And so she chased him, bounding along on her powerful hindlegs in the way wyverns do. The forest was a blur of greens and browns, and her only guide was the bobbing picnic basket. When it abruptly stopped, her wings had to flare to avoid crashing into him for a second time.

    Savel’s description of the pool had failed to do it justice, for what lay before her resembled something out of a fable of Voshadon - the ancient lake of the Gods. Crystal-clear water poured from the yawning mouth of a grotto at the base of the lichen-encrusted cliffs, and beneath it there lay a deep pool of the most brilliant emerald color she had ever laid her eyes upon. Trees sheltered it, allowing only the water and the flat stones which surrounded it to be bathed in sunlight, and in these confines there was a palpable sense of privacy and peace. It was a vision of wild pastoralism that those Merkokian artists were so fond of depicting, yet not even the most vibrant of pigments would adequately capture it.

    She watched him slip into the water, swimming with the ease and grace that only an aquatic could. It made her wonder about what Savel the playful, quiet, philosophical drake once was - the Savel that existed prior to life at Frether Valley. Savel the whelp. Savel the warrior. Savel the addict. Savel, the drake that attempted to kill himself, and quite nearly succeeded.

    He surfaced, shaking water from his face and horns, and beckoned her to join him.