Legend of Ransera

The twins were only too glad to leave the year-long winter behind. The winter of an equatorial desert was summer by their standards.

Kaus' flying was fancy and free, but when he realized his sister had Raithen's attention, he stopped showing off and just communed with the Air. For her part, Kala took the dux's instruction in stride—or in wing beat—as she was keen to learn. She had two decades of catching up to do. She also attempted to support what conversation the winds allowed with bits of hand sign they had been taught by their father and continued to use when flying with Aquilios. They might be immune to cold and the buffeting air, but their voices were puny things compared to aught but the calmest of skies.

There was a Fire within her now that she conflated with her growing divinity, a furnace that burned hotter than anything when required, and gave the impression of something ancient and unceasing. It allowed her to keep up with their unflagging energy, and it felt good in a way that made her feel vulnerable, to be able to keep up with the boys as she had always felt she was meant to do.

Her senses were spread wide, as well, and she felt the coolness of water. Once she knew it, Kaus knew it, and once they were overhead, she began a lazy downward spiral toward the oasis. Kaus buzzed Raithen, his laughter a quick rush, there and gone again, after tagging him. Once he had the dux's attention, he began to spiral downward as well, quickly catching up to Kala and dancing about her in his descent like some falling leaf or feather while she was still as an albatross.

Kala landed gently, stretching and mantling her wings in the sun. Kaus had caught himself near the top of a swaying palm, looking for the head-sized nuts that grew on some of them. He liked their water, their milk, their flesh. His sister didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't the right sort of palm, and he was too intent to notice her noticing. When he landed finally upon the ground, agile as a monkey from Ecith, he immediately began to strip his clothes away.

"I don't know if you ought to swim in there," she warned, glancing toward Raithen for confirmation. "The nomads use it for drinking water. And Sentinels, too, I would imagine. When traveling."

Kala nodded thoughtfully, loosening her attire. Kaus glanced at her and they nodded at each other. The serpents she sembled were sleeping and unlikely to molest them if they didn't molest first. With a whimsical smile, Kaus looked back to admire Raithen's dive and if he spluttered about the water, it was playacting before he doffed the last of his and launched himself at Raithen, his lithe whipcord muscles bunching under skin pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

He didn't hold back, knowing Raithen was strong. His skin reminded him of clouds pregnant with lightning. Their mock battle was as much distraction as anything else, however. The goddess let fall her clothing on a sun-baked boulder and stepped more carefully into the palm-shaded waters. She was likely waist-deep when the dux would notice her, unbothered by being naked.

While not as athletic as her brother, she was still shaped by blade and dance. Her eyes promised nothing, though she didn't hide her admiration for Raithen. Perhaps she enjoyed his bold admiration, as well. In Kalzasi, those who stared were more concerned with making a wife of the first winged Avialae woman in living memory. There was none of that with the foreign dux, and for all that he was foreign, at least to them, he was the most familiar person they had found in Solunarium.

Then she disappeared under the water, and if Fire was her element, the Water didn't hate her. There were proverbs setting fish and birds apart, and yet she swam as well as any aquatic bird, appearing again nearby, platinum hair hardly darker for the water. It seemed to wash away her courtly mien and her hands came up to push wet hair out of her eyes. She laughed at herself.

"Much better than the polar bear dives in the Astralars," she assured him, blinking away the water. "I don't know how chivalry works in Solunarium, Raithen, but if you go easy on me because I'm a woman, well..." She used Kaus' bent knee to push up and off, tackling the handsome dux back into the water.

Nobody was truly disappointed when Raithen sought safety ashore, although he did evade some half-formed plans in their flaxen-locked heads.

Kaus emerged, shaking himself like a bird, and leaving his feathers and his hair in a bit of disarray. He was all grins as he plopped down on his derrière next to Raithen, one cross-legged thigh flush with his new friend's torso. There remained something a bit coltish about his movements. Squinting upward, he was glad for the dappling effect of the palm fronds. He enjoyed the sunlight on his bare skin, but it would burn him if he wasn't careful.

Kala came second, and there was that dancer's grace to her, though her sodden wings were held out a bit awkwardly. She shook them, then eyed the boys in the wet sand and laughed, letting go the thought of returning to the city as neat as she had left it. When she stopped thinking about her newest limbs, instinct took over and she lost much of her awkwardness as she draped herself across Raithen.

While amused, her smile was a bit tremulous. Neither she nor Kaus were rakes by any means, but neither were they intentionally platonic in their relations. There were the exigencies of their family, and now she carried the weight of Naori's expectations as well as the future of her race. So many of their emotional needs were met. And yet...

"You are a treasure, Gaius Val'Aværyan Raithen," she said, her fingers coming up slowly to touch his lips as though they were the petals of some exotic flower. Slow again, offering him time to opt out, she took one of his callused hands and guided it to slide down her side and rest upon the modest curve of her hip.

"Would the vanquished yield unto me a kiss?"

This kiss was sweet. She didn't know whether she wanted much more than kisses in that moment, but also, she felt no pressure, which was strange and strangely nice. Raithan was a bit of a rake, but he was more than that, more complex than that, and while much of what she knew of him came filtered through Kaus' experiences—not that he had shared every intimate detail—and she rather liked how he was familiar but also a product of this far away elven oligarchy. She touched his ears—delicately pointed, albeit less so than some elves' ears—caressed his golden brow and his sharp jawline. It was a gentle exploration, and she liked how his white teeth flashed into such smiles, a contrast to his sunkissed visage.

"Another mind-reader," Kaus grumped when he was handed a coconut, but he smiled to their guide in the desert. He sipped at his refreshment and smiled, toes curling in the gritty sand.

Kala drank too, as Kaus curled down to kiss softer skin of Raithen's neck. He had, after all, had more time to explore the bright man. His answer was poetic, extemporaneous. His sister the dancer, his artistic bent had been with words. When he slowed down, surprising insight and imagery would tumble out of him.

"...once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destroy me..."

His sister's smile was admiring and a touch melancholy. There was no flare of lust between the twinned souls who knew each other deeper than any lover might, but neither were they uncomfortable here, skin to skin with the same beautiful man. The melancholy didn't stick. If matters with this foreign dux became bittersweet, well, the world was only so big and the Solunarian court only a portal away. But the privacy of the oasis was a soap bubble that would eventually burst. Best to enjoy it.

"Has the prisoner a last request?" she asked, an impish smile pierced by the reed straw.

The time passed deliciously, and while things might not have gone so far as some might have hoped, everyone seemed immensely pleased. Having slept so little the night previous, Kaus had been dozing with his head resting upon Raithen's flat belly, but his eyes cracked at the last question and he grinned blearily.

"Imagine Mount Sorokyn belching forth clouds on the coldest day you can imagine. Ash falls, floating down gently or eddying in the wind. It doesn't smell of fire and earth, though. It's air and water, all the fire taken out of it. It falls against your skin like down feathers, the tiniest bit of cold, but colder than coconut water. It disappears against the heat of you, leaving perhaps a bit of dampness, but mostly memory..."

His poetry was less structured coming out of the lightest of dreams, but it worked a bit of enchantment. While he had Raithen's attention, Kala provided the rest. At her request, water rose up out of the oasis. Air made it roil above them, from water to mist to cloud, and then she called all its fire to her until it began to glitter in the golden hour sunlight like diamond dust. At last, she let it fall as the air around them cooled at her command. Several hands pulled Raithen's clothes aside so he might experience the gentle touch of snow for himself and see whether he agreed with Kaus' description.

Her hooked finger gently slid over Raithen's sharpening nipple, a marvel at anatomy in action more than anything else.

"It can fall, light as anything, and leave nothing upon the ground. Or it can gather over night, through a storm, loading down branches until they snap from weight and winter cold. The roofs of houses are built steepled so it will slide down rather than crush underneath. In the mountains, it can gather higher than you are tall... it can gather until there is too much and it comes tumbling down, an unstoppable force of nature."

Raithen had been so solicitous. They wanted to share with him as well. There was magic, dry and nearly scientific, and then there was magic mysterious and awful—that is, rendering one full of awe. Nature was like that, and had its own magic.