Good and Useful

Several days have passed, and still Silovar’s coat hangs unclaimed over the back of a kitchen chair. The familiar, daily call of "Wēs Hāl!" has likewise faded from the top of the library steps. Her pile of query cards, once interspersed with inane, silly questions courtesy of Silovar, has dwindled to a dry collection of real questions from Scribes like Oswald.

On Norwestag and Nortag, she was grateful for Silovar's absence. She was unsure how the awkwardness of Westag evening’s events and the revelations that came with it would carry into the week. On Norostag and Ostag, she sorely missed the silly questions and the customary morning greeting. On Sorostag, she began to feel concerned. Had she truly put her new friend, a Dragon no less, off? Worse, she has begun to conjure scenes of Silovar befalling an untoward fate because of his reckless flying.

By Sostag, however, that concern had given way to resentment, and by this Westag morning, that resentment had bloomed into outrage.

How dare he? He has no right to who she is. He has no right to where she was from. He has no right. No right to fly overhead like a proud, blasphemous creature to show off to her. No right to pull her from her home on a ruse to subject her to the anathema of witnessing a Dragon reveal his scales and fly before her face. He certainly had no right to invite her to do the same, and the audacity he had to pull her to the edge when she made it clear that she couldn’t...

But the salt on the wound is how he scooped her up and pulled her from the edge to the safety of the tree line when she broke down. It was how he put his coat around her shoulders, and watched with the patience of a saint as she lost all dignity in a collapsing vortex of panic. It was the gentleness with which he listened to her, the tenderness with which he held her hands in his.

Osthryn masks the brief pang of embarrassment in her chest with more anger: He had no right to make her tea too sweet. He had no right to be angry with her elders – that was her pain. He had no right to leave his coat with her. And he certainly had no right to just leave her for days on end after all of this with no explanation at all....

Osthryn sighs deeply. Confusion. Confusion and longing are the emotions that trump her mind. Up to now, Silovar was a young human mage whose attention and company bypassed her reserved nature. He was a handsome stranger who greeted her every morning on the library steps, and one of the few individuals she felt comfortable around.

Now, Silovar is the "Great Silver Dragon of Mountainkeep". The one who carries the prayers of the priestesses to the gods, the show-off who flies with reckless abandon, and the insolent hypocrite who, despite hiding his own identity from the humans around him, insists that she throws off her own disguise and join him in jumping off a cliff.

Osthryn pages unseeingly through the cards in her hands, her emotional torrent manifesting only in the slight force behind each flip of the cardstock. With hope waning, she finds herself searching for a nonsense-question, any sign that Silovar has returned. At the end of each day so far, she had returned home defeated by a stretch of uninterrupted productivity. Uninterrupted productivity that was now beginning to feel so desparately empty.

She misses him.

Osthryn stares blankly at the cards in her hands. She counts the hours passed in her mind. It is well past midday. Oswald has left his perch early. There are at least two other librarians actively processing queries. The ranks of the mages and scribes creating new ones are thinned out well enough at this point.

Osthryn places the stack neatly back on the writing desk. The mage does not even notice her presence, so she does not bother explaining. "Life force, magic, twin suns ..." reads the start of the query on the topmost card. Intriguing, but not enough to hold her interest now. Even the conscientious use of keywords fails to please her. She has reached her limit.

A breeze meets her as her feet light the top of the Library steps. Her feet carry her further, deeper into the city. She nears the Keep district. She lets herself wander. Perhaps her thoughts will wander to useful places in her stead.

The heart of the Keep district is filled with a diverse managerie of people. Guards walk with proud strides, the pauldrons that Osthryn personally feels are overdone glint ostentatiously in the late afternoon light. None of these men will be hit by anything that warrants such heavy ornamentation, she thinks bitterly to herself. Ornamentation. While she does not doubt that they are capable of dealing considerable damage to an agressor or an unruly passer-by, these guards in their gilded, hefty armour emblazoned with symbolism, dragonscale patterns and finished off with those ridiculously overdone pauldrons are in her eyes chiefly ornaments. Shows of the Keep's prosperity and might.

Two noblewomen walk by her, nodding curtly in greeting. Osthryn lets her hand close around her braid, fingering the bronze flowers in her hair. She stands out, in a sense. Among the painted scales she so despises on the faces framed by halos of perfectly arranged hair on the tops of their heads. High collars mimic the pauldrons of the guards, almost as if in competition with the pointless ornamentation surrounding her. Her own emerald green kirtle, replete with bronze floral embroidery that she so lovingly added over time during her stay, stood out not for its intricacy or bold colour, but for its structural simplicity.

Osthryn returns the nod to the two noble ladies with a smile. "Country" girls were not completely foreign in Mountainkeep, and if it meant that she could remain in the comfort of her kirtle, she did not despise being mistaken for one.

The dulled voices of a distant conversation grow stronger in her awareness, pulling her attention elsewhere. Two guards, mounted, and covered in considerably less ornamentation than those on foot, converse idly with a passing court mage. It is not the nature of the conversation or the guards that pull her unconsciously over, but the mounts themselves. Wyverns.

Her eyes lock with one, and it appears to recognise her, to joyfully invite her closer with its gaze. Her hand meets the end of its nose, and it presses itself closer, burying its face in the crook of her arm as she runs her other hand up the side of its head. She brushes with the bridle, and instinctively her fingers close around the bridle's crownpiece lying behind the wyvern's horns.

"Fascinating up close, aren't they? Most folk are hesitant around them, but they are the picture of good temperament. Like a good even-blooded horse with wings.'' The guard's voice brings her to awareness of where she is. Osthryn lets her hand fall from the crownpiece self-consciously, stroking the wyvern's neck. Her fascination overshadows whatever social propriety she would otherwise have summoned. The conversation between the court mage and the second guard continues uninterrupted beside her. The wyvern nuzzles against her, the force of its movement threatening to momentary unsettle her balance.

"Are you a wyvernwoman? Not many civilians ride,'' the guard asks, making polite conversation in Osthryn's stead. She squints up at him, "No, I don't think I have seen a wyvern up close like this before. I am used to them from afar, or fully wild in the skies at their own will..." She trails off, the wyvern pulling its head back from where it pushed under her arm to nudge at her neck, nipping at her braid playfully.

"Woa, woa there Goldsmith's Crucible! Even if you like the lady, it is improper to eat her hair!" The guard scolds his wyvern fondly, pulling lightly on the bridle as he pats the wyvern's neck. Osthryn cocks her head at the name, "Goldsmith's Crucible?"

"Not my choice,'' the guard clarifies with a dry chuckle. "But these are royal animals, so they must have royal-sounding names. I almost think that the bonnie prince rolls a set of dice each time a wyvern hatches with how arbitrary these names become."

"Such a big name for such a little heart,'' Osthryn smiles despite herself, staring into the eyes of the curious and friendly animal.

"He likes you." The guard comments, genuinely impressed. "Even with a stellar disposition, wyverns are shy. If this is your first time seeing one up close, then you are truly a natural with wyverns.''

Or distant kin of one. Osthryn supplies in her mind.

"Do you only ride them?'' Osthryn asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.

"Into battle, out to sea, and into the mountains. Wyverns are good and useful beasts, and valuable all the same.'' The guard smiles at her. Osthryn smiles in return, and with a final stroke on the wyvern's nose, she greets the guard and leaves the mounted pair of wyverns behind.

Osthryn continues to wander through the city, clasping her hands together as if to enclose where the wyvern's scales met her palms.

Good and useful beasts. Valuable all the same. The words that Oswald spoke the day he saved her from certain torture fall into place ironically in her mind. She rubs at her wrists, the ghost of the silver ropes burning in her memory.