View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
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.
+ Show First Post
"Rrrrg."
"Sorry." After a moment, he adds, "I bet we could play pel-pwon while you were walking, if I carried all the everything. I'd probably drop some of it, though."
"I don't want to play pel-pwon."
"Okay."
"I'd miss you, if you went back."
"I'd miss you, if you went back."
Sniffle.
"I, I mean, do you want to...?"
"My mom said I h-had probably better not i-impose."
"Your mom is really dumb then!" exclaims Mial. "You're not imposing, we like you!"
Sniff.
"You've lived with us for twenty years. I like you, Mom likes you, Dad likes you! You can stay with us as long as you ever want, I promise!" he says fiercely.
"It's not up to you I'd have to ask your parents and what if they say no or want to know why I don't want to go home anymore -"
"They will say yes. I'd go and get Mom right now but she made me promise to only teleport when I'm really calm until I'm older! You just ask her, though! She'll say you can stay!"
"But what if she doesn't. Or if my mom tries to take me. Or something."
"I'd, I'd rescue you," Mial insists. "Somehow! I would! And Mom will too say you can stay. And she wouldn't let your mom take you if you didn't want."
"I don't even know why I don't want to go home anymore!"
"That doesn't mean you don't not want!" he says. "I don't know why I want to be a wizard so bad, but I'm not gonna let that stop me!"
"I used to want to go home really really bad though."
"But if you don't now, then now you can not."
"Your parents only thought they were taking me for twenty years."
"So? Ask Mom! Ask Dad!"
"What if they get tired of me in another twenty or thirty years and Mom doesn't want me any more and then I have nowhere to go but - but a house?"
"They will not get tired of you," Mial insists. "You're—you're—" He has a strong habit of speaking Leraal, because of his mom, but Leraal doesn't have the word he's looking for; he lapses into Draconic. "Family." A very specific kind of family. Not blood-related or formally adopted, but chosen, loved, kept.
Sniffle.
Mial nods firmly. "You are."
Finnah stops stomping and sighs and sits on the ground.