Hello again! I come bearing a dragon playground and a couple of misbehaving children!

17. Red-Eye

Nymph toyed absentmindedly with a bit of rope. On the other end, Ao Guang tugged frantically, bouncing around from side-to-side. Her tail was twitching as she thought. This was somewhat difficult, since Nimbus kept trying to pounce on it.

The weather had gotten warmer, something that made everyone except Specter excited and eager to roam around outside, so their riders had decided to take a trip into Vale. Instead of roaming around the dragon-friendly stores, since even they might have trouble handling twelve at once, they had picked a playground nearby.

Most of the property was devoted to a wide open field, with toys scattered around—like rubber tires covered in bite marks, or the rope Nymph was playing tug of war with. There were also mud pits, though Twiggy said they weren't quite as nice as the ones by the earth stables, and a sandy arena where Huo and Fang were wrestling. On the other side of a chain-link fence there was another field, though that one was scattered with toys for small humans instead of dragons.

Nymph dropped the rope long enough to make a grab for Nimbus' tail. He pulled it out of the way and rolled onto his back, one wing splayed out over the grass. She made another half-hearted attempt that he dodged easily. It was hard to concentrate on the game. She was too busy chewing over her linguistic problem, and getting progressively more and more frustrated.

The really irritating part? Nothing else was harder to say.

"Lurr," Nymph said. Nimbus cocked his head at her, then tried to pounce on her tail. He overshot it, and the pair of them went down in a tangled heap. She snapped playfully at his shoulder, then found her feet and trotted off towards her rider. It felt like time to try again.

Unfortunately, Sun and Yang had both separated from the main group to referee the scuffle between Fang and Huo. So Nymph sat near Neptune, watching him watch them.

"Lurr... Zzuh."

Neptune stared at her. "Uh... lizard?"

Nymph huffed. "Nno."

Nothing else was harder to say. Not because of pronunciation—or, not exactly. There was a sound in the middle of the word that she just couldn't get her tongue around, which was part of the problem. But there were lots of words that were hard to say, like Sage. Usually, though, their riders were good at guessing what the missing sounds were. She could say, 'Ssah' and knew that she'd be understood.

So when she couldn't pronounce a word perfectly, and her rider was stubbornly pretending that word didn't exist... She snorted and glanced around. Maybe she could try to get one of the others to understand? Sage and Scarlet might figure it out.

"Sorry, girl." Neptune patted her neck. "I feel like I'm missing something obvious here."

Nymph glared at him. Then she looked very pointedly at Sun, and back to him. "Luh... Lurr..."

Still nothing. She tried to flick her tail in irritation, but it didn't move. Slowly, she craned her neck around. Nimbus had it trapped between both paws, his head tilted to one side, winking at her.

Nymph shot a last glance at Neptune, who still looked puzzled, and decided... it could wait for another day. She chased Nimbus around the perimeter of the park as Scarlet and Neptune both whooped and cheered them on. As she ran she leaped over Titan, who was relaxing next to Twiggy and watching the other section of the park with interest. Nimbus glanced over his shoulder, saw her gaining on him, and darted across the field towards Zircon.

Their brother looked up when he heard footsteps. He glanced from Nimbus, to Nymph, then back again. Sat very still. Then, just as Nimbus passed him, he pounced, bringing both of them down together. While they were all tangled up, Nymph placed a paw on each of their tails and wagged her own.

Victory was sweet.

They drifted back to Beacon piecemeal. RWBY went first—apparently Blake wanted to visit Brand before it got too dark. Eventually it was just team JNPR left in the park, watching Ao Guang goad Titan onto a massive slide. There was a sharp metallic squeal as he slid a few inches with his claws digging in. Then he went the rest of the way, scrabbling frantically with his front paws, until he finally fell to the ground with a hefty thump.

Pyrrha smiled. She hoped they could come back here sometime soon—especially when Titan started eyeing the slide as if he was considering going again. "Sorry," she said, walking up to him and touching his shoulder, "but we should probably go back."

Even Guang looked a little tired as they left, though he still found the energy to run a few laps around Ren and Nora. Pyrrha was more concerned about Twiggy—she was better than she had been right after the incident in flying class last week, but she was still limping slightly, and one wing had been fitted with a gigantic canvas sling.

"Is she alright?" she asked Jaune, as they crossed the street.

"Yeah." He patted her nose. "Oobleck says dragons heal from pulled muscles and stuff like that a lot better than we do. As long as she takes it easy, she should be fine pretty soon."

Twiggy purred and stretched, wiggling her injured wing gingerly back and forth. Jaune gave her a light poke. "Hey. Remember the taking it easy part, okay?"

Pyrrha giggled. They stopped on the street corner, waiting until the lights changed. A family of three was crossing the other way, two fathers and a little girl who looked about six.

"I hope she's feeling better."

Twiggy nodded and rolled her shoulder again. "Ssore." Jaune rubbed at her chest, where the pulled muscle was, and her eyes slid halfway closed. "Gud."

Pyrrha was so absorbed watching the sweet interaction, she almost didn't notice. The family had reached the same corner they were waiting on, standing a respectful distance from the dragons—until the little girl broke away.

It took only a second for Pyrrha to turn around and realize what was going on, but by then the little girl had already crossed the distance between them. She reached out for Titan's tail and yanked. His head snapped around, his ears back, his body twisting until he and the child were nose to nose.

The shouts of Pyrrha and the girl's parents mingled together as Titan opened his mouth... and licked her face.

There was a moment of startled silence. Then the little girl started giggling.

"I am so sorry!" The taller of the two men approached and gestured to his daughter. "Cam, come here."

"It's alright!" Pyrrha put both hands by Titan's head, trying to push him away as he sniffed curiously at Cam. She stared back, reached out—

"Cam!" The shorter man tried to scoop her up, but she squirmed out of the way and grabbed one of Titan's horns. He lowered his head even further. She pulled hard. For a moment she scrabbled at the side of his face with tiny pink sneakers, trying to climb up but finding no purchase.

Slowly, Titan raised his head until she was hanging a few inches off the ground.

"Titan!" Pyrrha put a hand over his head to keep him from raising it any further, but he didn't try. He just moved it to the side, gently swinging the little girl over towards his back. Then he looked at her parents, blinking innocently while Cam shrieked in excitement and swung her legs back and forth.

"Um." Pyrrha glanced at the two men. "I think he wants to give her a ride."

They stared at her. Then at each other. Then at Titan, who was starting to tilt his head at an odd angle as Cam's weight twisted it around. "Yes!" she cheered. "Please?"

Both fathers shared a look—one bemused, the other anxious. "Is it safe?" the taller one asked.

Pyrrha glanced at Jaune, who gave her a small, encouraging grin. That was no help at all—what if she said yes and something went wrong? She remembered...

But Titan was purring quietly, even as one of Cam's flailing feet whacked his shoulder.

"Titan is very friendly," she said, smiling. "But it's up to you."

Cam let out a premature squeal of delight. The shorter man gave his partner a final glance, as if to check that this was alright. Received a nod. "Alright." He stepped forward as Titan lifted Cam up onto his back, holding his hands under her feet so that he could catch her if she slipped. Once she was settled, Titan brought his head back down and offered it to the man.

"Oh." He glanced at Pyrrha. "Is that... could he carry all of us?"

Pyrrha looked to Titan, who nodded eagerly. "While walking, yes."

It turned out the men—who introduced themselves as Earl, the shorter one, and Chai, the taller of the two—were heading in roughly the same direction as Beacon. The two of them sat on either side of Cam as she bounced in place and pointed at things, occasionally petting Titan's back. The whole family was a source of curiosity for the other dragons, who took turns investigating them. Earl took a liking to Twiggy, who let him scratch behind her ears as they walked.

By the time they reached the house where the family lived, Earl was hanging onto Cam's legs to keep her from trying to spur Titan onward like a horse. He didn't seem to mind—Pyrrha wasn't sure he could even feel it through his scales—but it still seemed prudent to put a stop to it.

"Here we are," Chai announced. Then he looked down. "Er..."

Titan offered his head, letting the man cling to him as he slid to the ground. Soon after, they hit a snag.

"No!" Cam clung to Titan's back. "I don't wanna go!"

"Easy, sweetheart." Earl scooped her up and passed her to Chai. She started crying inconsolably.

Twiggy whimpered and licked the girl's face. Freya purred soothingly. Ao Guang jumped up and down, then rolled over onto his back with his tongue hanging out. Cam stopped for a moment, startled. Hiccuped once. Then she began to wail even louder.

Titan fretted, pacing back and forth and nudging her lightly with his snout. Earl just sighed and scooped her up onto his shoulder. "C'mon," he said, smiling. "The dragons have to go back to school now."

"But..."

It took several minutes to coax Cam into the house. Titan spent the whole walk back to Beacon craning his head to look over his shoulder, warbling sadly, his tail drooping. Pyrrha was torn between feeling bad for him and wanting to smile. "It's alright. We'll go back to the park another time, and maybe we'll run into them again." He perked up a little at that.

Maybe he noticed Pyrrha's watery smile. He cocked his head to one side and hummed curiously.

"Nothing," she said, scratching under his chin. "You're just grand."

He smelled like damp loam, like mud and clay and the air right before a rainstorm.

Justice found him in his usual spot, in the pen behind the Albains' tent that had been built for him. Harbinger poked his head out, touching Justice's nose in greeting. Then it drooped until it was nearly touching the ground.

"You miss her," Justice said.

Harbinger's tail, which had been lying in the grass like a dead thing, curled around his legs. "She's a deserter. I'll have more siblings soon." Justice nodded slowly. He supposed that was true... but he was pretty sure that Ilia missed Blake, even though it was wrong.

"Still." He remembered the tiny hatchling chasing a beam of light right to its source, tackling Ilia to the ground and stealing her scroll. "She was..."

"It doesn't matter." Harbinger curled his wings around himself.

Justice snorted and kneaded the ground with his claws. She'd run away, but she was only a baby. What would she eat? What would she do without a rider? The thought lodged somewhere in his chest, sharp and cutting.

"How could she do that?" he wondered. "Run away."

Harbinger looked at him warily. "I don't know."

"Maybe she meant to come back, but she got hurt."

"You're the one that saw her stealing food."

"Oh." Justice flicked his tail back and forth, agitated. "Right."

"She wasn't loyal," Harbinger said.

Justice let out a low, frustrated growl. "I know that, but I don't understand. She didn't just run away, she left her rider."

Harbinger tilted his head to one side. "She wasn't loyal to her rider, either."

"But..." Justice tried to imagine betraying Ilia, but it hurt too much. The little hatchling was roaming around, all alone, instead of being with her rider. On purpose. "It doesn't make sense."

"Maybe... Has your rider told you about the big tent yet?"

Justice stared at him. "The one that smells funny? What about it?"

"If she'd told you, you'd know."

"But—"

"I'm not supposed to talk about it." Harbinger moved away from the side of his enclosure, the little fence made of sticks and rope, and slid into a small mudpit. Justice's indignant roar sent up a puff of smoke.

After that, he wandered. Ilia had shown him her tent and told him to go back there when it got dark, but he didn't want to lie down. He paced through the camp, tail flicking in agitation, his mind whirling. It was cold now that it had gotten dark. He stopped, looked into the trees outside the clearing the White Fang were living in.

He had to know.

Justice slipped away from the camp, winding between trees and sniffing the air. He heard animal noises, startled a small rabbit, watched the silhouettes of several bats fluttering across the night sky.

She smelled like sand, like sun-baked rocks and ash and dead yellow grass.

"Hatchling?" He wished he had a name to call her. The darkness was oppressive, and he moved in little circles to watch the forest. The smell was stronger on one side, so he moved in that direction. There was a fallen log, decorated with small mushrooms, and inside it... darkness. He sniffed again.

Two bright spots appeared in the shadows. Justice reared back, but not before the blast of air hit him full in the face. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, it felt like someone had poured salt under his eyelids. He howled and covered his head with his paws.

By the time he could make out even a blurry outline of the forest, the dragonet was long gone. He stumbled back into the camp, half-blinded, whining and lashing out at trees as he ran into them. Finally he broke through into the clearing, whipping his head this way and that, trying to shake away the source of the pain.

"Justice!"

Hands caught his horns, scratched behind his ears. He smelled Ilia and relaxed. Her fingers mapped out the injury. "What happened?"

He whined when she accidentally grazed a cracked scale. A murmured apology, and she gently led him to her tent. It took a long time, and he heard his tail knocking things over while he walked. Finally there was silence, and Ilia said, "Lie down."

For a while, all he could hear was her rummaging around somewhere. He tried to open his eyes to see, and found that things were much clearer now. A bit of rapid blinking stung, but he could now almost make out his rider's face.

"Here." Ilia knelt next to him, coaxing his head into her lap. There was something on her fingertips that smelled like leaves. He tried to pull away, but she grabbed him firmly by one of his horns and touched the side of his face. It hurt, but at the same time there was a wonderfully cool feeling. He relaxed.

"You're lucky I get dry skin in winter," she said, smiling and dabbing more of the plant stuff on his nose.

He lay there a long while, the dryness in his scales slowly being soothed away, his eyes drifting shut again. They didn't hurt very much anymore.

"Be careful," Ilia murmured, as she dabbed the last of the plant stuff on his forehead. "That thing is dangerous."

He snorted indignantly. She was a hatchling.

"I know she's tiny, but it looks like you managed to shut your eyes in time. If you hadn't... I worry. If it got that much worse in only a few days..."

Justice rumbled something vaguely like agreement. He didn't really want to get blasted in the face with the hatchling's powers again, anyway.

"Good." Ilia kissed his snout.

He purred, sinking into a slow, warm contentment he hadn't felt for a long time. Not since that hillside at Haven. As frustrating as it was that there were always so many secrets... at least he knew his rider cared.