Disclaimer: None of this is mine. All characters, places, etc. belong to Tamora Pierce.
A/N: Written for Rainstorm Amaya Arianhrod's birthday.
"And you should see the Bazhir celebrations. Gods, you'd love them."
"The desert certainly seems to agree with you," Lianne said, smiling at the beaming, enthusiastic young man standing before her. It was strange to think that this was the wide-eyed boy who had first run up to tell her that he was to travel the desert with Lord Raoul.
When he had left Corus earlier that year, Alan had been a pale, skinny thing with the look of a boy who has grown a great deal in an extremely short period of time and didn't yet know what to do with all of himself. Now he appeared to have grown into his limbs; his normally pale hair had been bleached so that there was very little of the red tint that had lingered from his childhood; his shoulders had the strong, firm set of a man; and his nobleman's skin had tanned so that he had more of the swarthy look of his knight master than the courtier's paleness of his younger brothers.
"It would agree with you, too." Alan's eyes were still shining with the excitement that talking about the desert had awakened in him.
"I highly doubt it," Lianne replied doubtfully. It seemed that the afterglow of his trip had caused her friend to forget her lifelong disinclination towards heat, something she had no doubt inherited from her mother.
"It would," Alan insisted with all his old, childhood stubbornness. "One day I'll take you there, and you'll love it. You'll see."