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“Too slow.”

Tanarah’s cheeks warmed with frustration as Li’s fingers tapped hers, berating her slowness and making her the loser of yet another touch-tap-retreat game which he insisted reflected and honed her instincts and reaction time. It seemed to her that he cheated, somehow, and demanded they continue to ‘play’ as an excuse to win at something whereas she beat him at all else. Revenge for his bruises, perhaps.

Regardless, she humored him.

He was quick. So frustratingly so that on occasion it amazed her, and the want to win — eventually — drove her persistently forward. After another dozen rounds or so, he pulled away. She glanced up, surprised.

“I’ve another game,” he said.

“Thought you didn’t like calling these ‘games?’” Tana asked, and he shot her a look.

“Another idea, then. To help you not be so terrible.”

“I’m not terri—”

Li stepped off, and then stooped, snatching up a small, rounded pebble from the shoreline. After brushing his thumb over it as though to test its texture before hefting it in his hand, he glanced to her. “This.” He held it up between his fingers, then reached down, dropping it in his pocket. “I’m going to stand with my back to you, and I want you to take it—”

“Easy—”

“—without me noticing.”

“That’s impossible,” Tana huffed. “You’re paying attention—”

“It’s not impossible at all.”

“You haven’t even shown me how.”

“You’ll learn a lot by learning how not,” Li insisted. “And after you’ve failed a good number, I’ll do it with you.”

Tana snorted. “I’ll notice too, since I know to be paying attention…”

“Everyone always thinks they’re paying attention,” Li said, turning his back to her. “But if they don’t know what all they’re paying attention to, there’s no telling what they’ll still miss. Everyone misses something.”

Rolling her eyes, Tana took a step forward.

“Stop.”

She frowned at his back. “I haven’t even gotten to you yet—”

“And you won’t, if you make that much noise in coming. Step back and try again.”

This, she realized, was going to be even more tiring than anticipated. The better part of an hour later — after having argued a number of times that sand and rocks made noise regardless of how you attempted to move on it and a number of other allegations which went entirely ignored — they switched roles. She convinced herself that he didn’t look entirely unimpressed when she caught the stone he tossed her one-handed without moving. But then, she didn’t consider that especially impressive to begin with, so perhaps she did imagine it.

Li was not perfect.

But he was quiet.

When she stood with a stone in her shorts and her back to him, everything seemed louder: the wind, the surf, the surrounding gulls and distant sound of city activity. After he got his hand into her pocket three times before she turned on a paranoid whim on him in the middle of the fourth reach, they switched to blade practice. That, at least, was familiar and satisfying. It also got better over time.

Just as she improved, bit by bit, he, too, got better over the course of days and weeks. Into their third month since having ‘encountered’ each other, he made for a workable practice partner, and though his technique still felt necessarily subpar, they had begun at least to learn each other’s rhythms.

It was on one such afternoon with the sun white hot overhead and ocean surf all but steaming as it skittered in over the burning sand, that they stood again on the coast’s edge, trading blows, Tanarah driving him back along the tideline. “C’mon, then,” she baited. “Is this all you’ve learned so far? Backin’ up?”

Li’s brow pinched, but he said nothing, parrying instead in silence as she continued to push. Then, with a twist, she stepped sidelong, striking at an angle and prompting him to shift abruptly. His foot caught, slipping on a loose stone, and a moment later, she jutted in, sweeping his blade off to the left and ramming her shoulder against him to send him toppling back with a yelp. The surf rolled in over him as he landed on his arse, and she grinned, holding the tip of her blade out in mock pin above his chest.

“Well,” she said. “That was better than la—ack!” She turned, tucking her head in and half ‘shielding’ when a surge of water rocked up from the sealine to splash her, plucked into action by a yank and toss of her companion’s hand and magic. After, as the water slopped down over her face pushing a mass of black tendrils in front of her eyes, she blew — for naught — to discourage them and then sheathed her blades in order to push them from her eyes with her palm—a much more successful endeavor, overall. “Alright, okay,” she said. “But it really wasn’t so bad.”

The dousing spell did nothing to deter her grin, and when she offered a hand, he begrudgingly accepted it, allowing her to help pull him to a stand.

“You’re getting better at your block and balance.” She reached, catching at the base of her shirt and dragging it up to rub at her face and ‘dry’ it, for what little good wet cloth did at drying wet skin, before bending her arms to pluck it up over her head. “But I—”

Li’s shrieking yelp of a sound froze her mid motion.

When she spared him a peek of a glance and a squint over the edge of her half-pulled shirt, his head was turned away, hand up and ‘shielding’ his eyes from…something. After several more moments of puzzled squinting, she frowned and finished with her shirt, shaking it before wringing it out and asking, “Are you alright…?”

“Have you…?” It took barely an instant of a glance though before he made another — this time more muffled and convoluted — version of his previous sound and slapped his hand over his eyes. “Would you put your shirt on?”

Tanarah blinked. “My…shirt…?” She frowned. “What about my shirt?”

“You can’t just—you took it off, you can’t take it off—”

Her stare was flat with disbelief. “You just said that I did and then said that I couldn’t. I just did. They can’t all be true. Idiot.”

“Y—c’nnnn…you can’t because you’re a girl and girls don’t just—” He paused, and then shot her a narrow-eyed dart of a glance. “You are a girl. You are a girl…right…? I know you’re a girl—surely you’ve…”

Tanarah couldn’t tell whether his look of baffled desperation and confusion was more amusing or frustrating. She settled for a mix of both emotions. But mostly amusement. Slapping the shirt to hang over her shoulder, she propped a hand on her hip as she eyed him. “You gonna tell me why that matters, then, or…?”

“Girls don’t…you have…” Li made a strange, vague gesture, his eyes shutting again.

Tanarah glanced down to her stomach. “I’m pretty sure I have most everything you do…and it doesn’t all look a great lot different at this point.”

The sound he made came closest to a, “Hnnnnnngghhhrhrrrgghhnnnnmmmph…” so far as Tana could tell.

“Dunno what that means,” she said.

“Girls get…”

A pregnant pause ensued.

She stared. And waited. At length, she rolled her eyes. “Well I don’t got tits yet, though I’ll keep in mind you’re so scared of ‘em for later reference. If all boys are such cowards round even the thought of ‘em, maybe I’ll walk with my shirt off more often. ‘Specially when I actually get some.”

Li shot her a low glower. “You’re not takin’ this seriously…”

She noted that his cheeks were, perhaps, as vibrant a reddish hue as she had ever seen them. After eyeing his — already bare — chest for a moment, she glanced to his eyes. “I’m bein’ serious as I feel’s proper. Really it’s just a bit of skin…if you looked, you’d see it was nothing special.”

He gave a withering sigh and pinched at his own face. “I don’t—”

A particularly sharp gust of wind — from the opposite direction from which the breeze had been blowing — cut him off, and Tanarah’s fingers moved to the hilts of her blades. “Li…I think you got more to worry about than the tits I don’t have yet, maybe if you opened y’r eyes—”

And trouble they did have. In the form of two ayrala dragons, for starters.

Fortunately, Li took this as reason enough to temporarily overcome his phobia of upper bodies which happened to belong to girls. Tanarah couldn’t have said from where exactly the dragons came, only that the peaceful, gusty bluffs went in a moment from a pure training ground, to a proper opportunity to test her blades in full. She utilized it fully.

Ayralas, while not massive, were certainly sizeable enough to make the playing risky — several steps above and beyond the might of their lower tier green brethren — and the winds they summoned with their shrieks and wings dragged at the beach sands like silt in a playbox. At every juncture where she thought she got in a good blow or opportunity, a slam of a gust so physical it felt bruising would bash against her, knocking her to the sand. When a swell of seawater rose, flicked, and then misted out, she blinked, startled in spite of herself.

Then, a dragon wail pierced the air, just enough of Li visible with his blade for Tana to note that he was responsible as the beast fell under the force of steel through its chest, scrambled, and then disintegrated. She took the moment of distraction to push upwards herself, also, and throw her weight back into the fray. She wasn’t sure what she expected — for him to run or simply defend only himself — but to fight side by side with Li was pleasing in its own right, and between his diversion ploys with mist and water magic and her blade, the remaining ayrala eventually fell with nary but a single gouge to her side.

In the aftermath, she shot him a grin.

“And see?” she said, hefting an ayrala orb with no small amount of satisfaction. “You are getting better…”

Li opened his mouth. But, whatever the reason he intended it for, in the end he seemed to change his mind, shutting it again instead and frowning as he moved forward. Wordlessly, he reached out, washing over the bleeding gash in her side and following it with a tickling pinch of magic. Nothing even remotely so powerful as her father’s, but enough to make a curious heat crawl into her cheeks.

She almost put her shirt on.

Then, out of sheer stubbornness or something else, huffed instead and folded her shirt and her hands behind her neck. “Thanks.”

Li shrugged.

“Enough for one day?” Tana asked. “Or will you miss my chest if I leave?”

Like a furnace, Li’s face burned, features flicking down into an abashed scowl. With an open-palm shove to her chest and not another word said on the matter, he strut off past her and down the beach. She opened her mouth, but then, when he didn’t so much as glance back — and instead, broke into a run several paces out — she opted to shut it and leave him be, shrugging.

It wasn’t exactly her fault it made him so uncomfortable.

Without his audience, though, she tugged her top around her waist, knotting it. It was hot out, and — with her hair loose and unadorned — she couldn’t possibly look that shocking one way or the other. Despite his departure, though, and her full intent to make that the end of her adventuring for the day, also, the fates did not seem to have that in mind. She took the harbor route on her way through towards her house, thinking that would be a simple enough route and always finding the folk who lingered there — moving on and off of and about ships — to be fascinating, colorful sorts.

Simple was not in the stars.

Halfway across the harbor’s front dock, bathed in the smell of fish, sea, salt, and spices, she paused at the cargo of one of the ships just up ahead. At first, she thought she’d been mistaken, because despite the massive size of the crates, glinting, and shaking from inside, surely no Magescians were foolish enough to try to transport—

A familiar shriek made her pause, and she stared, lingering near to the closest cargo barrel instead and staring.

—dragons.

Spells muted, inevitably, either blocked themselves or by markings on the crates, she assumed, because how else would you keep such beasts from breaking their way free. She could only imagine, though, what they might want them for. Fighting them in the pit, perhaps, where her father had once made a name for himself? Display somewhere? Sale to some obscure buyer?

Before she could make it all the way through her musing, an argument appeared to start up between several of the sailors with one of the town guards. From the gesturing and rising voices, Tanarah guessed that — for some reason — the dragons were unwelcome cargo within the city limits. She snorted and moved from behind her barrel, intent on moving past again and resuming her trek home.

Then, several things happened at once.

First, something exploded. Or, it sounded as though it did. Sharp and deafening as a crack of thunder but more condensed. Enough to make her ears ring, in any case and her face scrunch with a wince. Then, one of the crates creaked, groaning in a very unpromising way—

Wood splintered. A dragon roared.

Fire engulfed the ship.

Abruptly, activity was everywhere. With the one firani free, it was not long before the other, neighboring storage crates were broken. Sailors ran amok. The city guards — or what of them were near enough to immediately see the commotion — swarmed in. It looked, so far as Tana could tell, as though some of the ship’s original sailors still looked as though they didn’t want the beasts taken out. Breathing a sharp exhale, Tana eyed the scene, planning her path, and then darted.

Home, home, home. That was all that mattered. This wasn’t her fight, after all, interesting as it all was, and small as she was, it was fairly easy to dart between them. She made it past the most of it, out to the opposite side and along the dock’s edge towards the harbor’s far side. The firani landed hard in front of her, four feet to the cobblestones of the inner dock. Tanarah, like any cornered beast, froze.

Her pulse thrust hard against her chest.

The dragon snorted, shaking itself like a feline attempting to knock away grogginess from its body after a long nap. A talon clicked the stone and its nostrils flared, red eyes looking almost aglow as they pinned her.

«Little…» It flicked its tongue. «Not a dovaa…nestling…» A rumble ensued that might have been a purrr. «Eat you, now.»

When it lurched, neck snapping forward towards her, Tanarah all but fell in her haste to drop, barely noticing the shock of pain that came with hitting cemented cobblestones hard. Her feet skidded against the ground in the next instant, struggling to gain traction until they did and she shoved, darting as fast as she could sidelong—

—between two crates.

Her pulse thudded with a rough lurch of something nearing panic as the dragon’s snout bashed against the crates and it occurred to her that pinned between two wooden structures was probably not the wisest of locations for facing off against a firani dragon. Seconds later, the beast perched back, lifting its snout, opening its maw and gathering its breath. Tanarah stared, face lit by the red-yellow glow of the beast’s gathering fire, and her breath burned in her lungs.

Run.

Run.

Run.

Tanarah shoved off, kicking and diving foward, directly between the beast’s legs. Behind her, the crates burst into flame under the force of its breath, her body rolled, toppled over the docking and then—

Air.

She managed only a strangled yip and skid before over the side she went, off the dock, and into sea. Sputtering as the water engulfed her, she supposed that this at least — completely surrounded by water — was a likelier defense. Kicking with some effort towards the surface, she grabbed hold of one of the docking piers, and listened, eyeing the lip of the above walkway and waiting. One breath. Two. Three.

She heard commotion. Voices. The screech of dragon wail. She could still see battle going on with other dragons from the ship, but that seemed to be dying down as they were defeated. A minute later, someone glanced over the edge.

“You, boy?”

She squinted.

“Ladder?”

She nodded. A half minute later, one was provided, and as she crawled out and back onto the dock like a wet rodent, she was met with the chuckles and grins of several sailors.

“Saw that there.”

“Thought you was dragon toast, for sure.”

“Keep an escape plan like that, and y’ might live t’ be grown yet.”

At a slap on the back, Tana managed a cough, and then a grin, and when a firani orb was tossed her way, she blinked, but caught it. When she shot a startled glance towards the man who’d thrown it, he answered with a wink.

“You survived it, after all. Gotta be worth at least one of the lot.”

Her grin broadened to one that stretched from ear to ear, and — gods be good — she made it home in one piece.

Aaaand three more.