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Aurin holds his mother's hand as she leads him from the street to his aunt and uncle's house. He's been here only a couple of times, and can't remember most of them distinctly; they're sort of awkwardly related, his dead father's half-brother and the wife thereof. But now they have a baby parunia, and that means there is a dragon related to Aurin who is not too far from his age, only thirty-one years younger. This is apparently the sort of relation that it will be particularly enriching for Aurin to meet. They can do this now instead of waiting a month, because parunias don't die when they're babies; this one is safe, unlike the miscellaneous cousins on his mother's side he's never met because they are all in too much danger to get attached to (and have all succumbed to that danger). So here they are. Even though it was a very long flight and he couldn't ride his mother for takeoff and landing when she had to be a heron, only for the middle part.
Alys knocks on the door.
It's pretty great. And the swimming pool rekindles Mial's interest in something he's thought about but never gotten around to: properly choosing more forms than just human and merlin.
He wants to be methodical about this. Even as a blue-group, he only gets ten slots - he has no idea how he could possibly get by with just five. There are so many things to be, and he hasn't even heard of most of them yet!
When he gets home from Aurin's school, he begins a systematic research project that lasts him the next three and a half years.
He knows that he wants a swimming form (that's what got him started in the first place), but doesn't anticipate needing to breathe water, nor especially want to visit the oceans a lot, so he doesn't just go for merfolk and have done with it. After some back-and-forth on the subject of cephalopods - a month of it, to be exact, during which time anyone who talks to him hears about how exciting it would probably be to have tentacles - he tentatively writes down his favourite variety of river otter and moves on to the harder problem: climbing forms.
There are lots and lots of different climbing goats in the world. Many of them have cool-looking horns. Different species have been studied to different extents. But Mial has trouble envisioning such a goat climbing, say, a bookcase. He turns to other kinds of animal. Squirrels are neat, but a Mial-squirrel would be practically bite-sized; he'd rather go for something a little bigger. A cat, say. Even a cat would be fairly teeny, though... maybe a big sort of cat. Biggish. More than a pet but less than a lion.
Oddly enough, it's during a return to the subject of goats that he finds it: a species of snow leopard that preys on the goats and ibexes of the Rimarel Mountains on the continent of Nanela, and has developed astonishing balance and agility for this purpose. Their average size falls comfortably within a range that - he makes his mother calculate it, and then explain how she calculated it so he can check her work - would make a Mial-sized version come out just a bit bigger than an ordinary domestic cat. They are wonderfully fluffy. He'll be warm a lot when he uses it, living in a desert - but he'll have a form that will stay cozy when he visits cold places. He writes that down too, and selects a goat from among the prey species after several more months of deliberation. (They are mostly a lot like each other, and he wants to know which one is best, and it's hard.)
The next item on the agenda is to survey the non-climbing non-swimming animal species of Elcenia and see if there are any he desperately wants to try. But although he covers pages and pages with the names of species he thinks are interesting - bats and badgers, snakes and stoats - none of them, in the end, are interesting enough. He wants one thing that swims and two things that climb. It would be fun to slither or echolocate, but not fun enough to be worth using up another form slot out of his limited supply. Not yet.
He spends another month after that fretting about his choices, including wavering several times about whether or not he wants to pick a hybrid form for one of the three - it feels almost like a waste not to use this option, open to him but closed to any dragonish from a different colour group. Ultimately he sticks to single species, though: their characteristics are much more predictable. He'll have forms left over to experiment with, when he's older and has been using these ones for a while and wants something new.
And then, about two months shy of his seventieth birthday, he finally learns the three new forms. Immediately he begins spending most of his time as one of the climbers. Goat-Mial can climb the side of the house straight up to the roof with no trouble; feline-Mial prowls the tops of bookshelves and pounces fluffily upon his unsuspecting parents. And then upon his very suspecting parents, once they have developed a habit of checking all the tall furniture for evidence of fluff whenever they enter a room.
He wants to be methodical about this. Even as a blue-group, he only gets ten slots - he has no idea how he could possibly get by with just five. There are so many things to be, and he hasn't even heard of most of them yet!
When he gets home from Aurin's school, he begins a systematic research project that lasts him the next three and a half years.
He knows that he wants a swimming form (that's what got him started in the first place), but doesn't anticipate needing to breathe water, nor especially want to visit the oceans a lot, so he doesn't just go for merfolk and have done with it. After some back-and-forth on the subject of cephalopods - a month of it, to be exact, during which time anyone who talks to him hears about how exciting it would probably be to have tentacles - he tentatively writes down his favourite variety of river otter and moves on to the harder problem: climbing forms.
There are lots and lots of different climbing goats in the world. Many of them have cool-looking horns. Different species have been studied to different extents. But Mial has trouble envisioning such a goat climbing, say, a bookcase. He turns to other kinds of animal. Squirrels are neat, but a Mial-squirrel would be practically bite-sized; he'd rather go for something a little bigger. A cat, say. Even a cat would be fairly teeny, though... maybe a big sort of cat. Biggish. More than a pet but less than a lion.
Oddly enough, it's during a return to the subject of goats that he finds it: a species of snow leopard that preys on the goats and ibexes of the Rimarel Mountains on the continent of Nanela, and has developed astonishing balance and agility for this purpose. Their average size falls comfortably within a range that - he makes his mother calculate it, and then explain how she calculated it so he can check her work - would make a Mial-sized version come out just a bit bigger than an ordinary domestic cat. They are wonderfully fluffy. He'll be warm a lot when he uses it, living in a desert - but he'll have a form that will stay cozy when he visits cold places. He writes that down too, and selects a goat from among the prey species after several more months of deliberation. (They are mostly a lot like each other, and he wants to know which one is best, and it's hard.)
The next item on the agenda is to survey the non-climbing non-swimming animal species of Elcenia and see if there are any he desperately wants to try. But although he covers pages and pages with the names of species he thinks are interesting - bats and badgers, snakes and stoats - none of them, in the end, are interesting enough. He wants one thing that swims and two things that climb. It would be fun to slither or echolocate, but not fun enough to be worth using up another form slot out of his limited supply. Not yet.
He spends another month after that fretting about his choices, including wavering several times about whether or not he wants to pick a hybrid form for one of the three - it feels almost like a waste not to use this option, open to him but closed to any dragonish from a different colour group. Ultimately he sticks to single species, though: their characteristics are much more predictable. He'll have forms left over to experiment with, when he's older and has been using these ones for a while and wants something new.
And then, about two months shy of his seventieth birthday, he finally learns the three new forms. Immediately he begins spending most of his time as one of the climbers. Goat-Mial can climb the side of the house straight up to the roof with no trouble; feline-Mial prowls the tops of bookshelves and pounces fluffily upon his unsuspecting parents. And then upon his very suspecting parents, once they have developed a habit of checking all the tall furniture for evidence of fluff whenever they enter a room.
Finnah is slightly bemused by how much time and effort he's putting into this. She says that if she were going to turn into something else she would be a hyena of some kind, but evinces no hurry about it.
"I can only be ten things out of all the things there are to be and it is not enough," he explains. "So I have to pick the best things I possibly can, because I can't be all the things like I really want."
"Are you going to use up all your forms? What if you suddenly need to be some eleventh thing?" asks Finnah.
"No, I'm only going up to five and then I'm not picking anything else before I'm two hundred unless I absolutely need to," he says. "Like if we moved to a merfolk nation or something. Which we wouldn't do because Mom can't breathe water. But if we did."
"Yeah. I'd probably pick merfolk and octopus," he says. "But I'm not gonna unless I actually have to live in the ocean."
"Maaaaybe. I dunno, some forms aren't that good for hugging," he says. "Human's best of the ones I have. Octopus does have lots and lots of arms, though..."
greatcomposure
Mial is somewhat between projects after he settles on his three new forms. The pouncing game keeps him occupied for a little while, and he's always interested in helping his mother test her spells, but as time goes on and Mial continues to lack a focus for all his energy, the household's frazzlement level gradually rises.
Koridaar's first solution, since he was so enthusiastic about wizardry, is to turn him loose on her collection of spellbooks, theoretical texts, and old research notes. While he's busy with those, she finally finds a scoot whose promised safety parameters meet her standards and whose price falls within her modest budget. She buys it; it's convenient to have for trips to medium-distant places she hasn't already been, and after all, everyone else in her family can fly.
Mial, predictably, is fascinated by the scoot. He climbs all over it in human, feline, and goat forms the day she brings it home. It is shiny and blue and he wants to know everything about it. How fast does it go? How high? Can he see both these attributes demonstrated? How do you make it go? Can he make it go?
Once he allows his mother to get a word in edgewise, she explains that it goes both fast and high, that she is not planning to take it out again until she has analyzed it to her satisfaction, that it has controls in the front seat which she knows how to use, and that she will teach him how to use them too if he promises to be very, very, very careful. Very. Very, Mial.
He eyes the scoot with a mixture of suspicion and longing.
Koridaar's first solution, since he was so enthusiastic about wizardry, is to turn him loose on her collection of spellbooks, theoretical texts, and old research notes. While he's busy with those, she finally finds a scoot whose promised safety parameters meet her standards and whose price falls within her modest budget. She buys it; it's convenient to have for trips to medium-distant places she hasn't already been, and after all, everyone else in her family can fly.
Mial, predictably, is fascinated by the scoot. He climbs all over it in human, feline, and goat forms the day she brings it home. It is shiny and blue and he wants to know everything about it. How fast does it go? How high? Can he see both these attributes demonstrated? How do you make it go? Can he make it go?
Once he allows his mother to get a word in edgewise, she explains that it goes both fast and high, that she is not planning to take it out again until she has analyzed it to her satisfaction, that it has controls in the front seat which she knows how to use, and that she will teach him how to use them too if he promises to be very, very, very careful. Very. Very, Mial.
He eyes the scoot with a mixture of suspicion and longing.
Finnah is not especially interested in the scoot. She doesn't see much point except the obviously practical to flying while shut up in a capsule.
greatcomposure
Mial cannot quite articulate his feelings about scoots, beyond insisting that it is shiny and he likes it.
It takes him a week, and three flights with Mom at the controls, before he finally acquiesces to her condition and swears to be very careful with the scoot. In order to limit the temptation to bend this promise - they take promises seriously in Mial's line, but the scoot is very shiny and goes very fast - she extracts a secondary promise that he will not take it out by himself, even after he knows how, until both of his parents are satisfied with his ability to handle it and his understanding of its safety mechanisms.
She told herself she wouldn't, but Koridaar finds herself writing up a detailed list of suggested improvements to those. There are so many things that can go wrong when you are zooming along at high speed in a bespelled contraption, and now that she actually has the thing in her possession, she can see that it is not really adequately protected against all of them. She sends the letter to the manufacturer not expecting much to come of it; they're probably just going to find it obnoxious.
In order to lower that risk, she declines to mention the significant role her seven-equivalent son played in thinking up some of the more obscure ideas. As he has already proved while helping with her research, Mial has a twisty little mind that thrives on the challenge of figuring out how to break the unbreakable.
He complains loudly that having to be very very careful ruins the fun, but he is impeccably conscientious in his actual handling of the vehicle. And deeply, deeply enthusiastic about his scoot-flying lessons. Clearly not all of the fun has been ruined.
It takes him a week, and three flights with Mom at the controls, before he finally acquiesces to her condition and swears to be very careful with the scoot. In order to limit the temptation to bend this promise - they take promises seriously in Mial's line, but the scoot is very shiny and goes very fast - she extracts a secondary promise that he will not take it out by himself, even after he knows how, until both of his parents are satisfied with his ability to handle it and his understanding of its safety mechanisms.
She told herself she wouldn't, but Koridaar finds herself writing up a detailed list of suggested improvements to those. There are so many things that can go wrong when you are zooming along at high speed in a bespelled contraption, and now that she actually has the thing in her possession, she can see that it is not really adequately protected against all of them. She sends the letter to the manufacturer not expecting much to come of it; they're probably just going to find it obnoxious.
In order to lower that risk, she declines to mention the significant role her seven-equivalent son played in thinking up some of the more obscure ideas. As he has already proved while helping with her research, Mial has a twisty little mind that thrives on the challenge of figuring out how to break the unbreakable.
He complains loudly that having to be very very careful ruins the fun, but he is impeccably conscientious in his actual handling of the vehicle. And deeply, deeply enthusiastic about his scoot-flying lessons. Clearly not all of the fun has been ruined.
Aurin decides that he too wants to learn to fly the scoot.
Alys asks Koridaar what she thinks of this idea.
Alys asks Koridaar what she thinks of this idea.