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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.
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Aurin snorts. "I don't see why it's so weird. You've got parents. Uncle Avar calls Aunt Koridaar 'dear Magister' all the time. Is that mystifying?"
"He doesn't go around braiding her hair and making weirdly happy faces about it," says Mial.
"Well, I don't know if he ever braided her hair in particular, but I bet you he's made faces about her and they've just been married too long for him to do it a lot anymore."
"Whatever," says Mial. "Maybe I'd be mystified by Dad too if he was a hundred and twenty and talked about girls all the time, but I also wouldn't be even alive yet."
"You will grow up and you will discover girls. Or whatever," says Aurin. "Probably. And then you will get it."
"Maybe not. Maybe I will just be mystified forever."
"I think that happens sometimes," nods Aurin.
"Well, if I suddenly start caring about girls more than scoots I'm gonna be annoyed," says Mial. "Scoots are great."
"Don't tell Finnah you care more about scoots than her," teases Aurin.
"Finnah isn't 'girls', Finnah is Finnah. I will be just as annoyed if I grow up and start liking boys more than scoots, and I don't care about scoots more than you, although I might start thinking about it if you never say another non-girls-related word ever again in your life."
Aurin snickers. "I'll play a board game with you if you'd rather."
"Thank you," says Mial. He sets up a board game.
Which Aurin plays, mostly avoiding talking about girls.
Mial generously lets him come closer to winning than usual.
Aurin doesn't actually notice. He may be distracted by thinking about girls.
What a hopeless case.
It only gets worse over time.
The first time a girl lets Aurin kiss her he won't shut up about it for three weeks.
The first time a girl lets Aurin kiss her he won't shut up about it for three weeks.
Mial devises a strategy: every time Aurin goes on about kissing for too long, Mial starts talking about the technical details of scoot-building with equal enthusiasm and frequent mocking imitation of Aurin's dreamy faces.
This isn't actually much of a deterrent. Aurin just sort of lets him talk while thinking about other things, presumably the kissed girl.
It gets Aurin to stop going on about kissing temporarily, and gives Mial an opportunity to think through his design problems out loud, so it's not a total loss.
What a happy symbiosis they have.
It takes Mial not quite thirty years to build his first scoot. His mom helps out a lot with parts of the design and theory, and she and his dad both contribute to the physical construction, but he casts every single spell himself. It's both faster and shinier than Mom's: it's painted silver, with brown accents because he likes the way those colours look together on his merlin form, and the controls are all his own design. He is immensely proud. But he waits a full year, practicing every chance he gets, before he brings it to a race.
Even before, it was very uncommon for him to come home from a race with less than second or maybe third prize. It's now pretty rare for him to come home with less than first. There is talk of moving him from the junior branch of Scoot Lively to the main group, in the hope that he'll be competing more on his level there, but the league organizers are not yet ready to make an exception to the main group's equivalency restriction and he is still only a hundred and nine. Still the youngest-equivalency formal scoot racer in Elcenia, although the next youngest is twelve-equivalent, so his reign will be over in about a decade at most.
A reporter for a technical column is curious about his scoot and asks him technical questions. Then, because the column will need a little fluff, he asks the standard questions about how very precocious Mial is and how he feels about that.
Mial is very enthusiastic about the technical details of his scoot. He knows his stuff, as he should, since he designed it all.
When they get to the standard biography portion, he laughs. "Don't you people ever think of something new to ask me? Yep, I'm still the youngest-equivalency formal scoot racer in the world. Yep, I still think it's great fun. Yep, I still think equivalency restrictions are never going to be as good a measure of ability as real proficiency tests in whatever field. I've been answering these for almost thirty years now, come on. Actually, am I the youngest-equivalency person ever to build their own scoot? I bet I am, but I haven't checked."
When they get to the standard biography portion, he laughs. "Don't you people ever think of something new to ask me? Yep, I'm still the youngest-equivalency formal scoot racer in the world. Yep, I still think it's great fun. Yep, I still think equivalency restrictions are never going to be as good a measure of ability as real proficiency tests in whatever field. I've been answering these for almost thirty years now, come on. Actually, am I the youngest-equivalency person ever to build their own scoot? I bet I am, but I haven't checked."
"I'll find out," says the reporter, smiling, "it'll be in the article."