Ties That Bind

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It was an exceptional night for a flight. The sheer freedom of stretching his wings to their fullest, an arc over a tree, twist with the wind, a dive. It was freedom in a way that few could appreciate. Once he reached, what he deemed was a decent height, keeping watch for the various things Kellen had warned him against, he studied the city. It was pretty from so far above, the tiny city lights mirroring the twinkling stars. The curving lines of the highway, arching around and through the odd shadows from the buildings. It was larger than he expected, and he spent almost half of his hour simply circling it, learning it from an angle few else did.

The rest of his time was spent farther way, past the outskirts of the city, the smaller clusters of buildings out of sight. He wasn't worried about getting lost, ask the glow from the city made the sky appear lighter, and Anax enjoyed himself. Loops and sharp turns, high climbs and sudden dives. There was little better than a nice soothing night flight. Anax was more relaxed now than he had been since the summoning. He had always made it a point to appear relaxed, even if Cassie had surprised him, even if he wasn't.

When he returned to the field, he honestly did not think about giving a warning, Anax simply landed, a small cloud of dust curling around his feet, wings spread to keep his balance steady. His tail twitched a couple of times, assisting in the delicate balance. Again, there was that full bodied stretch, much like someone would give after a good workout or a long nap, before he prudently took the time to change back. For a minute, Anax stood there, taking in the contrast of the deep shadows behind Kellen and the brightness of the light illuminating her face.

He wandered back over to her, hands tucked away into his pockets and marveling slightly at the fact that his clothes appeared to be completely intact. That was actually something he hadn't considered. After all, it wasn't like he actually ever wore them before. That was probably a good thing, maybe?

"What are you studying?"
 
Though she didn't see him actually land, Kellen sensed the change in the flow of air and looked up, neck prickling with the atavistic awareness of a human not only no longer alone, but in the presence of something much meaner and bred with sharper killing instincts. For a moment she was concerned that someone, or something else, had arrived, and not her Guardian, but as her eyes adjusted from staring at a glowing screen, she relaxed, seeing Anax shifting and stretching into human form. It occurred to her that it was probably quite uncomfortable to be so... puny.

She reached down and brushed off some of the lingering dust that he'd kicked up with his landing, setting the tablet between her crossed legs, propped between the knees and balanced. When he approached and inquired what she was studying, she let out an aggravated sigh that misted a hint of frost around her mouth. "Laws, mostly. I've got an exam due next week." She rubbed a corner of her eye, pupils still adjusting. "Laws about us, more or less."
 
Chalking Kellen's seeming affection of strange devices up as a personal quirk, he shrugged a bit at her answer. "Laws, hmm? Sounds... boring to be honest. I can kind of see the point in knowing those things, but it's not really my thing." He sounded a lot more casual when he wasn't in his normal shape, mostly likely because it was much easier to form the words with a human mouth. Despite, looking around the field rather than at Kellen, Anax was giving her most of his attention.

"Perhaps you need a break? It seems to me you work a lot." Not that it was a bad thing, not really, but Anax needed something at least remotely entertaining regularly, even if half of those things were something he thought up. Dropping to a crouch, one oddly reminiscent of how he stood in his usual shape, eyes darting around, taking in things here and there. "Can I assist you? Seems like something I should do as you Guardian."
 
Oh, he was not going to enjoy classes come Monday. Well. Some of them he would. Kellen cracked a sheepish smile at his comment, nodding. That was fine. She'd pick up the slack on the things he didn't like doing, it was only fair. He was going to have to be doing most of the fighting anyway if they ever got into a bad situation, though her training covered battle and weaponry quite thoroughly as well.

"You've only know me about... twelve hours." She pointed out with a laugh. A quarter of which had been spent passed out face down in her bed, snoring. "But that's the life of a Summoner. Well. My life, anyway." Kellen stretched and then tapped the screen, switching it over to play the last thing cued to her playlist. "I don't know." She let the music fill the air. "Gaen's the only real measuring stick I have to go by, and he's..."

Kellen rolled her eyes. That was all she had to say.
 
Anax shrugged, "You have a point... I've had naps that lasted long than that." He wasn't lying, last time he had been badly hurt, he'd slept for nearly two months. Granted, that had been at least a hundred years ago, and who counted that. He smirked a bit. "Can't say, I do terribly well sitting still." One hand came up, waving back and forth slightly. "So, how is it different today than usual, well..." He grinned, looking very mischievous. "Other than the summoning."

He liked the sound, different, but a bit dark, which he liked. He definitely got a better partner than Gaen did. Kellen was much more interesting than Cassie was. He had heard her weird music earlier when he was trying to sleep, which was nothing like this. "He's strange, even for a Fae." Anax had absolutely no problem bluntly stating that. "Just tell me what you want to know." He stood again, clenching his fingers a bit until his knuckles popped.
 
"Agreed." Kellen set the tablet down on the grass after pulling off the scarf, bundling it together and letting the expensive gadget rest on top of it. She rested her hands on her ankles, leaning slightly on them, and gazed up at the sky, wondering what he'd seen, and if he'd liked what he'd seen, or if the pollution and the chaos had been innately offensive to someone that came from an entirely different plane of existence.

"Are you okay being here? You might be here decades. Fifty? Sixty years, if I live that long. Hell, I don't leave home without planning if I have to go somewhere for a week, you didn't even get a heads up about it." She tried to make it into a joke but she really was nervous she'd jerked him away from whatever the wyvern equivalent was of a wife, two kids and picket fence.
 
Decades. In a way, it seemed like a long time, but it also wasn't. He wasn't entirely sure how to explain that. Holding up one finger,, and making a slightly confused face while he thought, Anax started with a shrug. "It's... complicated. It's not that long of a time for me, but, I think that when I look back on it, it will seem different than before. But, we have wars that last for centuries, and can camp in a place almost as long as I will be here." He probably wasn't explaining it right, but Anax was satisfied with it. He grin reappeared. "Besides, who needs planning? Half the fun comes from surprises."

Abruptly, he fixed Kellen with a slightly odd look. Straight and pointed, "Are you pleased? Of all the thousands of different races, sub-races, and unique beings out there, did you have a preference? I'm betting you did not wish for one like Gaen..." A low chuckle. "But, You could have wanted a Firebird for all I know." Those were always fun, especially if he could convince one into an aerial race. Not to mention, even Anax could admit it, they looked incredibly neat.
 
"That does put things under a certain different perspective." Kellen admitted; was this the equivalent of a week-long business trip for a wyvern, maybe? And if that was something he shook off that casually, just how old was he? Though numbers wouldn't mean much if they didn't line up the same with the human concept of them. (And even humans had several different calendars and measurements of time to line up in comparison. At least she no longer felt too bad about yanking someone out of their normal lives and shove them into a whole new occupation.

The expression of ease on her face shifted, going blank before she let out a wry sigh. "I wasn't expecting anyone to show up, truth be told." Though the light wasn't great, Kellen pushed up the sleeve of her shirt to point out a thin scar below the bandaid slapped on earlier in the day, proof of last year's failure. Though not as pale as most redheads, she tended to scar easily. "This was my second attempt at calling for a Guardian. If I failed, I got kicked out of school. I was surprised when you showed up." She chuckled and let the sleeve drop back down. "As for firebirds, no. The one I know is so protective of his Guardian that he doesn't leave her out of sight. They're cool, but maybe not if you value your privacy."
 
"Umm hmm... Besides, look at it this way, I could have gotten stuck with a bubbly thing, that couldn't keep a secret if their life depended on it, who didn't eat any meat." He shuddered a bit, mostly for show. "Or a cat lover." That earned a honestly disgusted face. He couldn't stand them, but honestly didn't have a reason why. "Besides, your coloring is acceptable."


Her casual comment about not expecting anyone, was surprising. "Ah, well, then I'm pleased to have ruined your expectations, then." The mark was tiny, barely visible in the gloom, even to Anax, still it was some thing to wear with pride. "Do you know what that means? It means that I obviously wasn't ready for you the first time." His grin was back in full force, arms crossed behind his head. He could understand, to a point, how she must have felt, and didn't mind making it out to be his own fault. Still he let out a genuine laugh at her description of the firebird. "That's pretty accurate, they are almost more possessive than a dragon. So, what about your first attempt? Were you hoping for something specific then?" Anax's head tilted slightly, he was honestly incapable of being still unless he absolutely had to.
 
So he really didn't like cats? He was going to have a hard time going online, then, Kellen thought, trying to imagine him sort out the thousands and thousands of YouTube videos about cats. and the LOLcats. Yeah, maybe she'd keep him off the internet for a while longer.

"I don't know." She scratched the back of her head, frowning, picking up on that he was trying to make her feel better. They might have been partnered up to be together for as long as her mortal life lasted, but she wasn't quite ready to throw open a light on all the hurts and misgivings she kept shoved down with a chair jacked under the door handle. "There's so many different Guardians, no one really knows how many. I was maybe hoping for someone who wouldn't either need my blood to live or wouldn't throw a tantrum if I wasn't with them twenty-four seven. I did think, for a while, a selkie might be cool, but I don't know if they really existed at all." Okay, so she'd had her own selkie obsession there for a while as a teenager. But no one was prying that out of her.

No one.

She belatedly blinked at him. "Coloring?"
 
He accepted her answer easily enough, although the bit about the selkie was interesting. Good luck finding one though, that was about as likely to happen ans Anax stumbling on a cove full of gems. Nice idea, but pretty much impossible. "Fair enough, If I had to pick one, a selkie would have been a good choice.. Probably would prefer a flier on my end though."

Still he chuckled again at the surprise his throwaway comment earned. "Yes, coloring. The red, here..." A gesture to her hair, another to her eyes. "The sky here. We tell a lot about each other from our coloring. Every Wyvern is different." Abruptly, he crouched back down to her level, one arm resting on his knees while the other moved with every sentence. "See, every type has a different basic color. Black for a shadow, gold for light, green for air, you see? Then, as personalities, are shaped, and skills are learned and practiced, our coloring changes. Fighters, are marked in some way with red, always a dark shade, so it stands out even on say a fire Wyvern." He paused for a minute. "Nurturers, they have blue somewhere, fliers, or scouts, have the opposite color somewhere. Do you understand?" He was both a fighter and a scout, which is why he had red on his scales, and gold eyes. When he was hatched, he was entirely black.
 
That was a lot to take in. Such as, selkies existed? If she'd been less inclined to look towards the future and not the past, she might have kicked at the ground in frustration over missed opportunities. Instead she just listened to Anax's explanation, adjusting her angle when he crouched down. The line of her eyebrows hiked up, absorbing the news.

Yeah. Maybe someone should be adding that to the database on wyverns, nowhere did it mention that. Kellen nodded to indicate she'd grasped the explanation. "Right. That's... useful. Quite useful. Though I suppose it -- hmm." She fell silent, trying to gauge how different like was for a wyvern than a human. Absently, she reached and tapped at the screen, turning down the volume on the music as it kept cycling through the playlist. "So, if I were a wyvern, I'd be one nurturing badass? Is that right?" She inquired, lips tugging upwards, imagining not a typical dragon but more her dear, rather blunt mother, imposing presence in their household. Yeah, her mother would definitely be a blue and red wyvern.
 
He found it pretty entertaining honestly, the expressions that human faces could make. "Well..." He brought one hand up, resting it on his chin while he studied her. "I would say... based on how my own coloring looks in this form..." Anax took a moment, studying Kellen carefully in the dim light, and absently noting the decrease in sound. "It would depend on what you were to begin with, I would say either light or fire...."

Silent for a moment, then he stood, and nodded decisively, "I think possibly a fighter, with some medic training." He looked pleased, since that was a very good set of skills to have. Scouts didn't exactly have partners, per say, not like the front line fighters did during the war, but those that did tended to live a bit longer, which was always a positive thing.
 
"Yeah? That does sound cool. Pity I was born a sad little human, we're not nearly half as interesting." Just much more argumentative and loud, probably. She remembered her own inner promise to tell him about the others on campus and plucked up the tablet from the ground, fiddling with it and turning back to the database. Pinching her fingers together, she brought up the results she'd been studying earlier and turned it around, pointing out the relevant numbers in question to his inspection.

"See this? It says there's a dragon and two worms paired off with summoners in this school right now. Though it doesn't list any more information than that, due to safety and privacy concerns..." But with a few questions to the right people, how difficult could it be to find the person that had a dragon? They were probably as or almost as distinctive as Cassie getting the one Gancanagh in all existence.
 
"What can I say, we're amazing." He managed to say it with a completely straight face before the smile worked it's way free. "Although, I am not sure I completely understand you apparent love of strange little things like this..." They were interesting, sure, but Anax really couldn't quite figure out what was so wonderful about them that made human sit still for so long just staring at them.

Anax stared at the odd little machine, a blank expression in his face. "Does it? If you say so." It obviously said something, but Anax couldn't tell what it was. He could read, just not this language. Still,having a dragon around might be entertaining, although he had absolutely no interest in the worms. They were always happiest in the ground. Although, it did give him a couple of options to possibly make a trade of some sort with, if nothing else they knew the proper way to trading. No little bit of useless paper involved.
 
He didn't seem that enthused about the news. Kellen frowned and pulled the tablet back, turning it off and then simply shrugging, tilting her head, fingers still resting on the smooth touch screen as it cycled through the powering off animations. "Hmm, well... look at it this way; we humans are kind of frail and limited. We always work towards stuff that can make our lives as efficient and comfortable as possible. I can stock a million books into this one device, enough until the day I die. That's not counting being able to communicate with anyone in the world with a matching device, including my family, who on another continent."

She rose to her feet, in a long smooth movement, following it up with a good stretch, working loose all the kinks of sitting hunched over cross-legged on grass for more than an hour. Then she wrapped her scarf around her neck again. "I'm not even that bad. My twin brother doesn't stop texting day in and day out until his fingers fall off." With that confession, Kellen put the tablet away and took with arms akimbo, regarding Anax. "Ready to walk back?"
 
Anax looked confused, but shook his head a minute later. "I'm sure it will be more interesting when I know what it says. I enjoyed the music your played though." It was much different than what he was used to, but he still liked it. Despite wanting to know what was so wonderful about all their little machines, he still really didn't see the allure. He'd much rather be physically doing something over sitting still.

"Doesn't everyone try and make their lives more comfortable?" His head titled slightly, hair falling in his face. After shoving it back again, he stood, enjoying the feel of the light breeze. "That's what Gaen does, correct? He's certainly not a human. I don't think race has anything to do with that." It did sound like that little thing could be used for almost anything.

"Sure." He offered another shrug, not really caring one way or the other. He could use another nap, or a snack, but neither were essential at the moment. In all truth, he would probably walk back with her, and then go exploring all on his own. Although, hequietly promised to try and stay out of trouble. He would save that for another day.
 
"True, but aside from numbers, we're kind of frail. Convenience seems to be what drive us. Imagine being in your world, stuck in this," She indicated his human body, limited in capability as it was, and yet still far more powerful and swift than her own, "form, and to me, I feel like that would make survival kind of unlikely. Same as here. Granted, we tend to take it way too far and end up usually wiping out to the last survivor standing anything that we feel threatens us." Kellen did give out a little resigned sigh at that. Human nature was problematic, certainly, they liked to think they were sensible, and kind, overall, but they tended to overreact sometimes. No wonder it had taken centuries and a complete intervention of an unexpected outside force to reach the tentative armistice that had somehow lasted to modern days. All too easily Kellen could see them dissolving into all out war again.

She supposed most Summoners did, which was why they dedicated their lives to a career that usually ended in a violently premature way. That, however, was an incredibly dark path to meander down on her first day as a real Summoner, so she changed the subject, threading her arm around Anax's like she would have done to her brother when they walked home from their part-time jobs working at their Uncle's pub.

"Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of movies, and a little one called The Nightmare Before Christmas once we get home..."



Kellen's back muscles were killing her. She pushed up the back of her t-shirt and groaned, working the tight muscles loose as far back as her hands could reach. That was what happened after you spent the last three days working with a perfectionist warrior Guardian like Kali in combat classes. She had more bruises on her than a ripe banana... as lovely as the comparison was.

"Hey, I'm gonna head out. You good here?"

"We're good. You want a ride or anything?" The bouncer frowned. "Ain't nice for a girl like you to be alone in the dark."

"No, that'll be fine, I've made my way home in much meaner streets than this." Glasgow hadn't always been as touristy and nice as the local council had worked to turn it into since the nineties. Kellen pulled loose the bartending smock and absently glanced at the clock, despite knowing it had to be past 3 AM for the club to be closing down. 3:28. Enough time to get home around 4, sleep, and get ready for Chem Lab at 11. She liked working at the nightclub, mostly, though it wasn't the usual atmosphere she'd grown up with. Taverns and nightclubs were not interchangeable atmospheres, as she'd learned quickly once applying for the job.

For one, there was a lot more groping, and a lot less punching. A pity, in her opinion, but not everybody enjoyed a good brawl like the Scottish. Kellen came around the back of the bar, letting the half-door swing shut behind her, pulling the messenger bag over her neck and settling it around her hip. She smelled of lime wedges, rum, tequila and salt, like a human margarita, and hoped Anax wouldn't care.

Kellen was getting her bicycle out of the side closet they used for emergency storage, right off the side of the lobby, when the bouncer poked his head in and cleared his throat. "Sweetheart, your boyfriend's here to pick you up." He sounded reproachful. "You should have said somethin', making me worry."

Who? What? All Kellen could think of was Gaen as she pulled the bike behind her, frowning until she turned and had line of sight with the nightclub entrance.

Seeing Anax, confusion turned to worry. "Did something happen?" She was sure she'd left him taking a nap. Her mind immediately went to something having happened to Cassie.
 
It was oddly warm tonight, the wind practically non-existent, and the sky full of clouds. Certainly a drab and dreary night, although Anax could tell rain would soon arrive and shatter the stillness. Despite all the people, the strange buildings and the whole.. different plane of reality thing, the judging of such things was very similar.

Almost the same second that Kellen appeared, Anax turned toward her, his acquired hat pulled down just enough to hold his hair out of his way, but not so much that it would cover his eyes. He had been patiently waiting, and amusing himself by making up strange stories about anyone that passed by, at least until the bouncer had poked his head out and demanded to know what he was doing there.

He offered a shrug. "Not that I know of.. Cassie woke me up from my sleep, rambling about Gaen being gone all night, and her wanting some 'private time.' That was.. what.. a few hours ago? So I wandered around for a while and decided to come get you." He made a gesture with one hand, the other tucked away in his pocket. He didn't really mind, he was very good at finding something to do after all, even if it was mildly illegal.

Tilting his head slightly, Anax politely didn't mention all the smells, as Kellen looked tired, and it wasn't as much fun to tease her when she was tired. "Are you finished, or do you have more to do? I don't mind waiting, although, it will rain soon."
 
"No, I'm done, getting off work now." How long had he been out there? And just what the hell was Cassie doing that she needed private time?

Maybe some things were better not asked and not answered. Kellen nodded to the bouncer, indicating everything was alright and that Anax wasn't a serial killer waiting out there to stab her in the back. She adjusted her grip on the bike and steadily guided it outside before plunking it onto two wheels and gazing up at the sky. Her vision was exceedingly poor compared to a shadow wyvern's, but the lack of telltale pricks of starlight indicated how overcast it was.

Once the door was pulled shut behind her and deadbolts pulled, Kellen's night was officially and truly over, prompting a deep exhale of relief and a roll of her shoulders, glad that she wouldn't be pulling a near all-nighter like that again for a while. "So, how'd your night go?" She asked conversationally, pushing the bicycle forward and walking it by the edge of the sidewalk, letting the reflectors shine to indicate there were pedestrians. "After unceremoniously getting booted out of your own suite, I mean."
 
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