I'm sure, you can try it. Probably not for long.

It'll hurt and you only let someone touch your crest feathers if you lost a bet or a fight or something.

"Why do you even have hurty feathers?"

The four year old boosts the little one.

I'm not sure. Why do you even have colorful hair?

He holds very still. Just in front of the wing joints and just behind them are the two plausible sitting spots.

She's in front. "It's not riding if you don't move," she points out.

So Star stands up. He looks a lot bigger when he's not deliberately making himself as small as possible. Those wing membranes add a lot of Draak.

He cranes his neck to the side to glance at his passenger, then slowly starts walking around.

It's actually weird to meet children that aren't scared of me, he comments to nobody in particular.

"Are baby Draak scared of grownups?" asks a three year old.

Yeah. Baby Draak are mostly scared of any animal bigger than them! At least on first impressions.

Slooow walking.

"Would they be scared of us?"

"Faster!!!"

Maybe? Probably. If you want to not scare a baby Draak, crouch down so you look small and don't look directly at them and don't get close or try to touch them.

No. If you fall off me you will get hurt and I will be ashamed. I don't want either of those to happen.

"But this is boring! An alien ride shouldn't be boring!"

Things that should be aren't and things that shouldn't be are, sometimes. I don't know how safe riding a Draak is. Do you?

"Go faaaaster!"

"If you're bored you can get down."

"No!"

...Huh. You are not acting how I expected! Interesting.

I will go faster if the older students think it's okay.

"You can probably go a little faster. You're not much taller than some of the playground structures."

"What were you expecting?"

He goes to a normal Draak walking pace, like a brisk jog for Amentans. He turns around to not get too far from the other students. The wing joints move a lot.

A hatchling might go 'I will not be mad at you if I get hurt!' or 'how can I make it safe?' or just be quietly disappointed instead of repeating themselves.

"She's only one."

"Some one year olds are that sophisticated."

"Yeah but you can't expect it."

Pace, pace.

...I think hatchlings just start more mature and thoughtful and introspective than Amentans do.

"Your eggs can, like, already talk. Right?"

"Yeah there's that - are they parentbloggers if they're not really her parents - there's the Tapai baby Draak and there's blog posts up about talking to 'em still in the shell, Amentans have to learn to talk, takes about a season to even be saying a few words let alone sentences."

I only know one side of that, being in the egg, but yes.

"Do you have real long pregnancies before you lay the eggs?"

...I don't think so?

He pauses thoughtfully.

That sounds like something I would know, if it were so. But, I don't actually know it's not.

"...you don't know how long it takes?"

No. Nobody ever told me directly. And I've never tried to have a child myself. But other things make me fairly sure eggs are ready quickly even if I don't actually definitely know.

"Huh."

"WHEEEEEE," says the one riding.

Trot, trot.

One thing I notice is that Amentans organize so very many more things than Draak do.