Chapter 38

When Tristan walked into the diner that evening he saw the rest of the cadets gathered at their usual table. They were laughing and talking and discussing the day's activities. Elora was there, sitting between Jamin and Fira. Tristan suddenly decided that he'd rather sit alone tonight. The incident at the infirmary was weighing heavy on his mind along with the ever gnawing memories of Dark Wing and their forbidden friendship.

"Hey, man!" Taddeo called out as soon as he spotted his friend.

Tristan raised a hand in greeting, but couldn't manage to send back a cheery response. He paused, throwing a longing glance in the direction of a solitary corner table.

Mathias turned to Taddeo. "You sure you want to welcome that dark cloud over here?"

"Hmmm. I see what you mean." Taddeo returned. "He must've had a rough day."

"At the infirmary? I don't see how that could be rougher than the flight practice today." Mathias returned, rubbing a hand over his wind chapped face. The winds were from the northwest, down from the Forbidden Mountains. Cold and dry."

Elora overheard their words and frowned at Mathias. "We may not be battling the elements in there, but you'd be surprised what other kinds of challenges we face." She said as she pushed back her chair. She walked up to Tristan who was already making his way over to the corner table. "Hey, why don't you come sit with us?" She urged, placing a hand on his arm and tugging lightly.

Tristan glanced at the cadets' table and saw that Jamin was watching them closely. Tristan quickly shook the girl's hand off of his arm.

"Come on." Elora urged, looking up at him with those big imploring eyes that were hard to say no to.

Tristan quickly shifted his gaze to the floor. "Ok, ok." He said and followed the girl back to the table, making sure to walk behind her. Jamin gave Tristan a warning look as he approached, so he plopped into the chair on the opposite side of the table next to Taddeo.

Taddeo greeted him with a hearty shoulder slap. "Hey, glad you made it here."

Mathias rolled his eyes, but said nothing while the other cadets greeted Tristan.

"Had a bad day at the infirmary?" Taddeo asked.

Tristan swallowed hard, not wanting to talk about it for fear he'd break in front of everyone. "Just infirmary work." He said with a shrug, not really explaining anything and avoiding looking anyone in the eyes.

Elora gazed at him thoughtfully for a moment before turning to the other cadets. "So I want to know something." She said, surveying her cadet friends surrounding her. "What made you all want to become skybax riders?" When her gaze drifted past Tristan she winked subtly, indicating that she understood how he felt. He managed a grateful smile.

"Come on." The girl urged. "It's not exactly a highly sought after career on Dinotopia. I love a good story. Tell me why. She poked Jamin in the ribs. "Why don't you start first? Tell us about it."

Jamin ran a hand through his black curls. "Well um…to be honest, it just started with wanting something different than a routine life in the desert. I wanted to see more of Dinotopia and after thinking hard about it, I thought the best way to see all of Dinotopia along with the best means of travel would be on the back of a pterosaur. I was inspired with the skybax riders who came in and out of our town."

Mathias grinned. "There's certainly more to your motivation than that." He said.

Jamin's gaze drifted down to the table top. "Yes. You would know. I don't know why Mathias and I hit it off when we met later at Treetown." He went on. "We aren't really anything alike."

Mathias laughed. "You were such a fun target to pester. You liked everything so perfect and I just had to mess up your patterns from time to time. It was just too fun doing things to annoy you and waiting to see how long you could take it before cracking."

Fira rolled her eyes. "Seriously, Jamin. I have no idea what made you want to be his buddy after all of that."

Jamin suddenly shifted uncomfortably. "Well, after all that torment, he turned out to be not too bad of a friend after all."

Mathias leaned back in his chair and stretched in a gloating manner. "You going to leave it up to me to say why?"

Jamin laughed slightly. "No, you ugly brute." He said teasingly, wadding up his napkin and chunking it at the other boy.

Mathias caught it before it could catch him in the face.

Elora looked up at Jamin, her eyes glowing with interest. "Well? Tell us."

"I kind of did something…well…stupid back at Treetown."

Taddeo laughed. "You? Yeah right."

"To make a long story short I'll just say this. I kind of got lost in the woods near Treetown and it was Mathias who found me."

Tristan raised and eyebrow. "Lost?"

Jamin sighed in frustration. "I was used to the desert, ok? Open space and sky you know. Up at Treetown the forest all looked the same somehow. It turned out that Mathias was working with the rescue team. We kind of settled our differences after that. We realized that we both had the same interest in tackling the challenge of going into skybax rider training after youth camp at Treetown." Jamin sighed. "Mathias, why don't you tell your story next? Tell Elora why you wanted to become a skybax rider."

Mathias grinned and sat up straight. "Sure. I grew up always enjoying challenges and after my first ride in a sky galley, I decided that I wanted to fly someday. Manning a sky galley just wasn't my thing so I decided it would be an awesome experience and challenge to win the trust of a skybax and become its flight partner."

Jamin kicked his friend beneath the table. "Ha. It wasn't all glorious. Tell them the other part too."

Mathias looked uncomfortable, a rare occasion for him. "Well…my mother was pushing me to become a musician like her. I knew that becoming a skybax rider would leave little time for music practice and performance and mother couldn't argue with that."

Tristan cracked a smile. "You know, for being raised a musician, I've never heard you sing once."

"Hey, yeah." Taddeo said.

Mathias frowned. "Didn't I just get through telling you that I kind of purposefully left all that music stuff behind?"

"Except for the Dragon Flute." Tristan pointed out. "For some reason you hung onto that."

Elora's eyes suddenly widened. "You have a Dragon Flute? Have you any idea how valuable those are? You should be putting that to good use. A Dragon Flute should never be wasted."

"Who said I was wasting it?" Mathias said. "Wind Song loves it. I share it with her."

Tristan cleared his throat. "So what I find interesting about your story is that you wanted to become a rider by running away from something else."

"I wouldn't exactly put it that way." Mathias said. "Why don't you tell us why you ended up here?" He said quickly. "You seem to have the worst time with training than any of us."

"The worst?" Tristan said sharply. "Why would you say that?"

Mathias shrugged. "You barely get by on things. Half the time you seem to be tired, dragging yourself from one assignment to the next. You get sidetracked with a rogue skybax, get in trouble more than once, and you have to have extra tutoring. It's a wonder Twilight puts up with you at all."

Tristan felt the heat rising to his face. He stood and jabbed a finger against the other boy's chest. "Do you really want to know why I wanted to become a rider? I don't know if you would hear it anyway. You're too busy filling your head with new ways to tear me down."

"Hey, Tristan, just calm down." Taddeo said.

Mathias crossed his arms. "I'm listening." He said arrogantly. "In fact, we're all listening. "Tell us why you decided to train to be a skybax rider. Tell us all how you managed to get here without going through youth camp at Treetown first."

Tristan's eyes widened in dismay.

Mathias was quick to detect the other boy's moment of hesitation. "Aha. I suspected you never went to Treetown."
"Why are you doing this?" Tristan sputtered.

Jamin looked around the room nervously. "Guys. Hey. Um, people…watching?"

The others didn't seem to notice his worry.

"See?" Mathias went on, eyes still riveted on Tristan. You can't deny it either. Listen, I don't know how you got accepted for training then without the Treetown studies first, but I know one thing for sure. You're struggling already and you are not going to make it to the end with training." Mathias said in a scornful tone.

Fira was the one to stand up next. "Mathias!" She said angrily. "What does it matter how he got here? And why does it even matter to you whether he succeeds or fails?" Her eyes narrowed. "I think you're just worried. You're worried that Tristan will do better than you. You're worried that somehow he'll succeed and you won't. Because deep down, you know that Tristan is good. He's good at what he does and he's tough and he's not a quitter."

Tristan turned and looked at the girl in surprise. She was defending him. She was standing up for him over Mathias.

Fira glared at Mathias. "You know what? I'm done with supper. I'm done with this interrogation." She glanced at Elora. "Sorry, nothing against you. It was a harmless question you asked everyone. It's just that when these two are anywhere near five feet of each other, you're asking for nothing but trouble." She turned on her heel and left the diner.

Taddeo looked torn on what to do. Part of him wanted to follow Fira out the door and try to console her. The other part of him sensed that it would be wiser to stay and make sure nothing went further between the other two cadets. Surprisingly, he went with his first choice, leaving Tristan and Mathias to sort things out on their own for once.

Elora sat in her chair, wringing her hands together in agitation. Jamin put an arm around her shoulders. "Hey, don't worry. They're like this all the time." His tone of voice didn't sound too convincing though.

Mathias flicked a piece of lint from his sleeve, trying to act nonchalant, but Tristan caught sight of the brief peeved expression on his face as Fira left with Taddeo trailing behind her. Tristan realized this was his chance to strike back, verbally, rather than physically. "What's wrong? Hard to see her stand up for someone else other than you?" He said. "And walk off with another guy?" He dared to press the other boy, partly because he longed to get him back for the mean things he said and also because he highly doubted the other boy would actually physically attack him because they were right in the middle of the diner, after all, with many other folks watching, and they would witness Mathias taking the first blow. This would get Mathias in trouble with their instructor. Tristan longed to see him get in trouble for once. Besides, if the other guy did strike out at him, Tristan was ready and determined that he wasn't going to get hit this time.

To his surprise, Mathias couldn't seem to handle that last statement. He did strike at him. Tristan dodged and Mathias's fist slammed down onto the table top, causing the pottery dishes to rattle.

Jamin and Elora jumped up and quickly scattered out of the way. Tristan dodged three more advances. He realized suddenly, that all those times sparring with Dark Wing was finally paying off. He was moving too fast for Mathias to get in a good blow and this seemed to be infuriating Mathias all the more. He didn't seem to want to stop what he'd started until he landed a satisfying punch at Tristan.

It just so happened that Will entered the diner just then, ready to sit down to a relaxing meal, only to see two of his cadets causing a ruckus in the middle of the diner. Neither of the boys saw him at first until he strode up behind Mathias. Tristan noticed Will then and the distraction caused him to falter. This gave Mathias the chance he was longing for. But he never got to land the satisfying blow. Will grabbed the boy's arm from behind, stopping him short.

"Mathias." Will growled. "Sit down."

Mathias didn't really have to think about obeying the command because the man practically shoved him down into a chair at the now vacant cadets table.

Tristan wasn't sure what to do with himself now. His eyes darted toward the doorway, but Will crushed that idea by sending him a steely gaze. "You too, Tristan. Sit." Will turned to the startled diner guests and assured them that things were under control now. Gradually, they relaxed and the sound of busy chatter filled the room again.

"The first solution to clear up this behavior in you two is to expel you from training." Will said.

The shocked looks on the cadets faces gave Will at least a small amount of satisfaction. "However," he went on, "you both have committed skybax partners at this point and I don't want to have a hand on breaking those ties. I just wish you boys would understand that this is not a competition. That's what's getting you into trouble. Now what I'm going to say next will probably surprise you. This fighting incident that I just walked in on, I'm not going to do anything about it." Will paused for a moment, allowing some time for his words to sink in.

Mathias and Tristan just stared at the man in bewilderment. Both were clearly expecting some kind of punishment like they'd experienced in the past.

Will leaned back in his chair. "That's right, just think about it. You are responsible for your own actions. If you continue displaying disruptive behavior, the worst thing that will happen is not some kind of punishment that I will put on you. You'll punish yourself by dealing with the consequences of your own poor choices. Just keep in mind that at this point, your growing bond with a skybax partner is still in a fragile stage."

Without giving either one of the boys a chance to say anything, Will stood, nodded to a waitress, and moved to a fresh table—the same solitary corner table that Tristan had longed to occupy earlier.

As an apology to the diner workers, Tristan offered to wash dishes for an hour. He explained that he had a lot of experience with kitchen scullery work since his parents ran a restaurant back in Sauropolis.

Mathias avoided Tristan and was given the job of delivering a load of scraps to a family of dryosauruses. The boy's avoided each other for the rest of the night.