A/N; This is not my best, but it's all I have finished right now, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone by not updating. There are plenty more in the works, never you fear! I'll be able to write even more once i'm back in my dorm and have the Cycle to reference to :) Happy New Year! Also, my page breaks aren't showing up after my first A/N...sorry about that!
It was with bittersweet joy that Arya beheld Eragon's face upon the rippling water in the white marble basin that had once belonged to her mother. Time had not changed him, as it had not changed her- the brown hair, brown eyes, and streamlined features were the same. It hurt to look at, but she could not look away, and to save herself more sorrow she struggled not to process Eragon's expression in her mind's eye.
He always wore his emotions so clearly on his face when he looked at her. Even five years, ago, when he was last at her side. Her open book.
"Did you receive the plans my spellcasters sent to you?" she forced herself to ask, dragging her mind back to the present before too much time elapsed.
Eragon blinked, looking dazed. "Er- sorry, didn't catch that."
She suppressed a sigh. What sorry fools are we, she thought wistfully, that love would bind us so, when the miles between us would mock us with each step we take further apart.
"The new plans for the rest of your city," she replied. "Did Blodgharm receive them?"
Eragon was in the mountains far beyond the wastelands of the east with the five new Riders she had sent him over the years, where he had established the Rider's new citadel upon one of the mighty peaks around a lake and named it Aslicar. Rather than build a city with raw materials they did not have, Eragon, the Elves, and the dragons had been carving it, bit by bit, out of the stone of the mountainside. The place Eragon stood now was rather like the Craigs of Tel'naeir- a flattened, circular cliff they had turned into a courtyard and used as a landing place for the dragons that overlooked the lake where the Riders flew often in practice. Over his shoulder, Arya could catch glimpses of the orange-glinting water, like a lake of fire, in the light of the setting sun.
It was only midday in Alageasia.
"Aye, we did," Eragon replied. "I meant to ask your architects some questions I have about the arches for the grand hall. The stone here doesn't work well with the design."
"We should invent a more sufficient way of communicating for your construction needs," Arya commented thoughtfully, tapping a slender finger upon the living wood of the table next to the basin. "Eragon, anything you need to build your city, you need only ask- it will take time, but I well send whatever is required."
"Perhaps we-"
A shadow suddenly blasted past the cliff behind Eragon with a great roar of wind, ruffling his hair, almost skimming the rock- two shadows, it seemed, one far smaller than the other, and she glimpsed their form over his shoulder. Dragon-shaped shadows; banking a sharp turn with left wings pointed straight down at the ground, flying so close together, overlapping, that it almost seemed like one dragon with two sets of wings and a very large, long tail.
The shadows were gone in a flash, so quickly they had appeared just as flashes of darkness glinting faintly in the light of the dying sun. But Arya had gone stock-still, her hands gripping the bowl so tightly the marble creaked threateningly under the strength in her fingers and her knuckles went white as bones.
"Eragon," she said, when she at last found her voice- and Eragon almost flinched because Arya – cool, passive, calm, stone-faced Arya- was audibly fighting to keep her voice under control so intensely that it almost sounded strangled, "was that…a red dragon that just flew behind your back?" Each word was pronounced slowly, carefully, and contained a chill that rivaled the winters in Carvahall.
Eragon stared at her with wide, innocent brown eyes, looking every inch the fifteen-year-old boy he had once been- while Arya's gaze narrowed and her eyes glinted so cold a green that the hair on his arms stood up, a thousand miles away, because Arya was no idiot, and none of her pupils had been red.
Or gigantic.
"…Maybe."
Arya's eyes widened in fury. "You-"
Her image rippled and then unexpectedly vanished, leaving Eragon alone in silence.
A thousand miles away, beneath the dusky pines in the eternal, evergreen heart of the ancient Du Weldenvarden, Blagden cocked his head and watched with a mixture of amusement and mild horror as Arya's marble basin suddenly shattered into a hundred pieces in her small, dainty hands.
A/N: Arya's more pissed here because Eragon DIDN'T tell her he was harboring a certain red Rider in his new capital. But hey, he's not in Alagaesia anymore, so I say he can do whatever the fuck he wants.
The name Aslicar belongs to me- it's not the Ancient Language, so please don't steal! Also, I love the idea of some of Eragon's new students getting over their fear of Murtagh and him teaching them a thing or two about flying :) this may tie in with a much later chapter- I'll let you know when it's up. Please review!