Welcome to Gaia! ::

"You? That much energy?" Earendil pretended to think about it for a moment. "No, not that much."

He paused for a moment, then grinned down at her. "More. She tires out before you ever did. And your days were twice as long as hers."

"I don't think I ever could," Earendil murmured, his thumb brushing lightly against her shoulder as they walked towards the castle entrance. "I was so impatient for those days when you came ... they were so few and far between. The only days when I was never bored."

He would be the first to admit that, as a lesser prince, he hadn't had much to do until he had given himself something to do.

At that question, Earendil blushed. "Ah ... never mind. Forget that I said anything." He shifted his bag on his shoulder and looked very deliberately ahead of them.

"Look," he pointed at the entrance to the castle where Kelirahc and Amalirahc were waiting - Kalirahc patiently, Amalirahc markedly less so. "It seems we're a bit late."

"I know," Amalirahc agreed. "But I want them to already be here! So that we can go!"

Patience was definitely not one of his finer qualities.

Kelirahc put one hand on his son's head and spoke to him quietly in the Ancient Tongue. Amalirahc pouted, but he stopped complaining.

"Sorry we're late," Earendil apologized as he and Lin finally arrived.

"You are not," Kelirahc replied evenly. "We were early, and I believe that you also are still earlier than we expected." He gave his son a look, and Amalirahc pouted up at him.

"Well it felt later!" he said defensively.

"Hooray!" Amalirahc cheered so loudly that his father had to immediately shush him again.

Of course, once they were outside, noise didn't matter, and Amalirahc chattered nonstop as Kelirahc summoned his dragon and they climbed on.

"It's going to be so much fun! We get to go on the ship again, and it'll be just us and then we're going to go see where Ada grew up and see more people like him and we're going to see Haldia finally!"

It was hard to tell what he was most excited about.

"Well," Amalirahc reasoned as the dragon lurched into the air, "I'm bigger now, so Mama says I can help a bit with the sailing ... since there's a lot of people from here that have to learn, I won't be an extra bother. And Mama says I also have to keep doing my lessons while we're traveling."

He stuck out his tongue to show what he thought of that idea.

"You don't need to know how to read or write or do arithmetic to fly or sail a boat or hunt," Amalirahc protested. "And I can read well enough, and write, and I know sums and multiplications ... what more do I need to know? If I have to learn, I would rather learn about things, not - not things that I will never need to know!"

His annoyance was clear in his golden eyes - though that could also have been caused by the wind whipping his hair in his face.