[quote=@Tatterdemalion] [b]Adila![/b] There's some unofficial rules to the race, you know. Bringing someone down over the desert? Not just allowed, it's encouraged. Bringing someone down over the gulch? Well, as long as you're willing to pay for their medical bills in a pinch. That's why everyone's eyeing you suspiciously, or oiling their harpoon cannons meaningfully, or squeaking nervously when you strut by all fire and power and gleaming scales. Nobody knows how to take down a [i]dragon[/i]. You're an unknown quantity, the Watch's pet dragon all grown up, a real princess of the Bazaar, and if you fail today you're going to become the laughingstock of the entire Bazaar and never be taken seriously ever again. (Spoiler: you did not fail today. You came in first place. You swooped down and dug your claws into the sand at the finish line and breathed fire joyfully! You cut through the air like it was the empty void beyond Ouroboros!) The real competition... that's got to be Flash Morgan, hired this year by the textiles guild. Her strawberry blonde hair is streaked with her teal racing stripes, and her custom flight suit is covered with trophies of past races. She's a returning champion, coming straight from her victory in the trans-Askaian triathalon to honor her contract and defend her pride. She was tough as hell to beat, wasn't she? Neck and neck, right to the finish, both of you doing loops and ducking out of the way of each other's attacks. And when you managed to push that last burst of speed out of your heart, swooping down low into the merciless heat of the gulch to edge Flash out... How'd that feel, champ? And how'd she take it, anyhow?[/quote] It would have been so easy to be mean. A lot of the racers were. They came carrying bolas and tanglewool and baskets of rare flying rope snakes and harpoons with chains and a general attitude of it being preferable to destroy your enemy than to win the race. The entire sport felt like it was teetering on the brink of doing away with the race part altogether sometimes and just acknowledging a future in dogfighting alone. And wouldn't it be just natural for the dragon to perfect that style? The final evolution, a story told in a dozen burning, falling gliders and a triumphant monarch of the clouds? But Princess Adila was here to race. When she'd been younger she'd had the aerial attitude of a pigeon - wings were for short, flappy, high intensity hops between floor and rooftop. Flight in the open, in the Blue - outside the practical confines of the city - it was frightening! Nobody in the Bazaar knew how dragons were supposed to fly, or what the rules were, or how to be good at it. She didn't know what was dangerous and what wasn't so she kept her nose to the sand... And practiced. The harbour was her haunt. She'd scorch so low over the water that her wingtips almost brushed against it. She'd circle and bank around the ships as they came in thick and crowded, daring herself closer and closer. Sometimes she folded her wings and point her nose and let her speed carry her under the water like a knife and her magical eyes lit up the treasures of the sea floor like they were hers. She had thought for a while that was what flying was, and that it was fun. She'd been wrong. Flying in symphony with someone else was [i]everything[/i]. She hadn't brought any weapons. She was doing something even more daring. From the moment she spread her wings and leapt from the starting cliff she stuck as close to Flash Morgan as she could, almost on top of her glider. She'd seen Flash's eyes - was this the play, to tear down the strongest competitor as quickly as possible? But then Princess Adila caught a harpoon out of the air and immolated a hurled shot of tanglewool with her breath. Flying upside down, body in between Flash and the other competitors, she'd grinned and memorized Flash's face when she'd realized what she was doing. She wasn't here to destroy the competition. She was here to protect her greatest threat. Again and again Adila swooped and dived to intercept projectiles aimed at Flash's glider. Again and again she brazenly exposed her back to Flash, completely vulnerable. And Flash... didn't take the shot. Again and again. Adila was practically [i]daring[/i] her to. She swooped and wove, in and out, angling at rocks and steam pits and making it extraordinarily clear that even a nudge from Flash Morgan's glider would take her out of the race. Flash rose to the bait. She started flying closer in response. They entered a suicide spiral of flight, spinning around each other, more and more daring, more and more trusting. And then it went a step further. Flash made a move that was actively impossible, flying directly at a rock formation. If Adila had held to the same almost-but-not-quite touching descent then they would both crash. The ultimate test of trust. Adila took physical hold of Flash's glider and applied her weight against it. They scorched around the corner faster than any glider before or since. Adila had seen the truth - the move was only suicide if they weren't perfectly in sync. It had been the trust of an acrobat, leaping into the void and leaving it to your partner to decide if you would fly or fall. They burned ahead of the other gliders, ahead of everyone and everything else, wrapped in a fluid, twisting, synthesis of trust and instinct and adrenaline and physicality. Unrehearsed displays of acrobatics and impossible acts of trust given to a complete stranger. Princess Adila rode Flash Morgan's speed and skill and Flash Morgan rode Adila's strength and power and they tumbled through the blue... Right up until that final moment when there was nothing but blood and instinct and they broke apart again, blazing like two meteors furiously towards the finish line. Not a betrayal, but a synchronized madness, a passion that came from being driven beyond the point of sanity, where when the end of perfection comes into sight then there's nothing left but to greedily grab any remaining fragment of it like a girl drowning in the salt'd ocean grabbing for a flask of fresh water. They spent two weeks together afterwards. During this time they didn't say five words to each other. There was a strange, fearsome magic in the air between them as the energy of that shared flight, shared fall, shared burning impact played itself out. Then, just as wordlessly, they blazed apart like the heart-pounding breathless and boiled escape from a sauna. It was less a relationship and more of a convergence of celestial mechanics, and to use words to describe why it happened or why it ended is to condense the might of Jupiter to an equation - insufficient even if accurate. What could be more intimate than flight? The strangest thing about the Riders to Princess Adila had never been the cold, or the void, or the wickedness. It had been their attitude to flight, to fight in formations with lances atop their pegasi. They were almost as indifferent to the air as the groundborn were and Adila couldn't understand it. Princess Spite had even climbed atop her back as though she was simply a larger version of her sky horse and hardly seemed to have realized what she was implying through doing that. But perhaps she'd gone too far as well. Looking back on this time, this moment, re-living the all-consuming thrill... Adila realized that she'd grown guarded. She'd come to regard her wings as so powerful and dangerous that they'd almost become too sacred to be used at all - and when she'd given in and touched on that energy again with Princess Iron Star she'd shied away from the results because the moment wasn't exactly like it had been built up to in her head. There was an energy here she was missing. At once more limited and less. Capable of less, able to do more. She felt like she wanted to bookmark this moment in her life and come back to it again, to recover what felt like such an important part of her life and values. And again, an idea blossomed in her head - but it wasn't quite ready yet.