Chapter 2

It was nerve-wracking to return home with a report of failure, rather than success in Skybax Rider training. But even so, Tristan pressed on. He had to break the news sometime. There was no escaping that, so it might as well happen now.

He paused in front of the Sauropolis Star Restaurant, his tired eyes sweeping over the building, relishing every familiar detail. It was a tall limestone building featuring columns at the entryway, marble steps, arched windows, and elegant trim work. The restaurant belonged in the lower part of the building and the Starr family's apartment where they lived was situated in the upper part.

Tristan took a deep breath, enjoying the savory smells wafting from the restaurant. Dinner rush hour would be in full swing by now. He pictured the busy waiters and waitresses dashing to and fro between tables, taking down orders and serving the guests. In the back, the kitchen would be whirling with activity; dishes clattering, fires whirring, cooks barking orders, amongst the steam rising from pots and pans and hot ovens.

He considered walking through the front doors of the restaurant and ordering a meal as casually as any of the other guests, but when he shifted his heavy pack, stretching his sore shoulder muscles, it reminded him of the burden he'd carried back with him all the way from the canyons. No, he wouldn't walk into the restaurant and surprise his family that way. It would be better to go in the back way, up the stairs to the family apartment. After all, he was still unsure at how they would handle the news that he'd failed his training, disobeyed orders numerous times, and struck off on his own rather than asking for advice from his instructor.

If that wasn't bad enough, he still hadn't decided on whether he would mention the skybax egg to his family just yet. His mother was a stickler with rules and he suspected that she would lecture him and then see to it that the egg ended up in a Hatchery. In all reality, Tristan knew that hatcheries served a good purpose, but he didn't relish the idea of the egg being in someone else's care other than his own. It would be best to avoid revealing the egg to the eyes of the public. How he came to have it in his possession was a long and complicated story and anyone in authoritative positions might deem him and his past actions back at Canyon City as a threat to the Peace Code. Maybe it would be better if he just remained quiet about the egg for as long as possible and to keep it out of sight for now.

Questioning rules was starting to become a habit, but he quickly shoved that thought to the back of his mind, not really wanting to come to terms with it.

Tristan skirted around to the back of the restaurant, the nervousness about facing his family getting to him. Keeping a firm grip on the iron railing, he climbed the familiar back stairs. The backpack, bulging with his travel supplies along with the skybax egg, felt heaver than ever before.

He paused in front of the door, wondering if he should go on in since it was his home, or if he should knock since no one would be expecting him. He looked down at the iron face of the triceratops door knocker and felt the odd sensation that it was staring right into his troubled heart. He swallowed hard and reached for the ring clutched in the creature's mouth and slapped it against the wood.

Tap, tap, tap.

He let go quickly and waited, straining his ears to catch the sound of approaching footsteps. It felt weird knocking on the door of his own home as if he were a mere stranger.

After a moment the door handle turned and the door swung inward slowly. A dark haired girl peeped shyly around the door, halfway hiding behind it.

"Celesta?" Tristan said.

The girl's pale gray eyes widened and she immediately stepped away from the protection of the door. She rushed forward and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight.

"You're back!" She gasped.

Relief washed over Tristan as he returned his youngest sister's hug. "Of course I'm back. I told you I wouldn't stay away forever."

Celesta pulled away and looked up at her brother, her eyes shining like two silver stars. At fifteen, she was the youngest in the family as well as the shyest and quietest. As she looked him over, her joyful expression shifted into a look of concern. "You look…rough. Is everything alright?"

Tristan swallowed hard and dropped his gaze down to his worn boots. Everything was not alright. Everything had gone wrong with Rider training, but when he considered telling his sister all about it, his throat constricted. He chose to evade her question instead. "So where is everybody?" He asked, closing the door behind him. He reached back and pulled the hiking staff from his backpack straps and leaned it up against the jacket and hat rack.

Celesta knew that something was wrong. When Tristan was troubled and didn't want to talk about it, he always tried to look busy and avoided eye contact, just as he was doing right now. She decided not to press him to talk about it for now. Instead, she grasped his hand and led him down the entry hallway and into the sitting room which was usually reserved for entertaining company.

"Mother and Father are working in the restaurant and Tiana is at her dance lesson. Sekani is with Tiana, of course." Sekani was a young deinonychus orphan which Cedric Starr, the children's father, had rescued once when he used to work as a guard for Rainy Basin convoys. Tiana, the middle child of the three, had immediately bonded with the creature and since then they'd been close friends.

"So what are you doing here all alone then?" Tristan said, managing to crack a smile now. He knew exactly why his little sister was staying home. It was because she was very shy and would rather stay home than go out alone into the boisterous city.

Celesta smiled. "I do house keeping jobs throughout the city now. Today I am taking care of our own house. With everyone always darting in and out, things get messy around here fast. I like keeping things clean and tidy. It's an important job you know."

Tristan glanced around realizing for the first time since he'd walked in how neat and tidy the room was. Colorful tapestries decorated the stone walls and intricately woven rugs brightened the dark wooden floor. Plush pillows were plumped and propped up neatly upon the furniture, the candlesticks looked freshly polished and the floors looked as if they had been swept clean. He was impressed. His sister had truly done her job well.

Celesta grunted slightly as she tugged at her brother's backpack. "This is so heavy. Is it full of pretty rocks from the canyons?"

"No." Tristan said quickly, stepping back out of his sister's reach while keeping a protective hand on the shoulder strap of the backpack. Carefully he slid the pack from his shoulders and set it gently on the floor. He looked up again to see Celesta watching him with a mixed expression of surprise and disappointment on her face.

Guilt washed over him. Celesta had always been fascinated with rocks and shells and other interesting small relics of nature and Tristan had always made it a point to pick something up for her whenever he traveled anywhere away from home. He realized with a sinking feeling that he'd been so wrapped up with his own troubles that he'd forgotten to pick up anything for her—not even one small pebble from the canyons. And now that he was thinking about it, she would've had a birthday recently too. He shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. "Um, Celesta, I uh…I don't have any…rocks…this time." He glanced around the room, not sure where to look until his gaze settled on his backpack again. Of course, he always had the option of showing her the egg.

For a moment, he struggled inwardly, trying to decide if he should keep this orphaned skybax egg a secret for a while longer, or if he should let anyone in his family know about it right away. In some ways, it would be easier to share the burden, but then again, it was his burden to bear, a responsibility that the skybax had given to him alone. If he ever wished to fully gain the skybax's trust, he would have to be very careful on how he took care of the egg. And instinct still told him that he would lose control over it if it ended up in a Hatchery.

Celesta fixed her pale eyes on her brother, watching him closely. Tristan was still staring at the backpack while a distraught look crept into his eyes. The girl touched his shoulder. "It's alright." She said softly. "I have too many rocks in my collection as it is."

Tristan glanced up and looked his sister in the eyes, searching for the right words to speak. "Celesta, I…I have something to tell you."

"Just let me guess." Celesta said quietly.

"But you could never—" Tristan started to protest, but his sister silenced him by shaking her head.

"Shhh. There. Now listen." Celesta continued to speak in a soft tone. "I had a dream about you."

Tristan frowned slightly. Celesta had always been extremely intuitive and occasionally this trait came out in her dreams. "Is this the same dream you told me about in one of the letters you sent to me back at Canyon City—the one about me falling?"

Celesta shook her head.

"Wait, what?" Tristan replied, totally surprised. "A different one now?" He laughed nervously, trying to cover up how anxious he felt. "Well I sure hope it was a good one this time." His sister's last dream about him had uncannily come true. He did end up falling in the canyons and it had taken him nearly six weeks to recover from it. He hadn't wanted to worry his family though, so he'd never mentioned the details about it to them.

Celesta searched her brother's face. "You're not a Rider yet, are you?" She said gently.

"But what makes you think that?" Tristan quickly replied. "Was it your dream?"

"I could tell the moment you walked through the door." Celesta said. "I know you. If you were a Rider, you would've been wearing your new uniform, eager to show it off. And yes, I hoped the dream had no measure of truth to it, but by the looks of you, I'm afraid it could have. You see…in my dream, I—I saw a skybax…die." Her voice dropped off nearly to a whisper. "Somehow, I sensed that she was connected to you.

Tristan stood still saying nothing.

A minute of silence dragged by, but Celesta waited patiently for him to speak. She clutched her hands in front of her, twisting her fingers together.

"It could've been Twilight." Tristan finally said, his voice sounding slightly husky. "Maybe…maybe you can tell me how…she died. Maybe you discovered it in your dream, because I'm…I'm looking for answers."

Celesta's eyes welled with tears. "Oh, Tristan. I am sorry. I'm am so, so sorry. I really don't know. I just saw her lying on the ground, bleeding, and dying. I felt like she was connected to you somehow and even stranger yet, I felt a connection to her. Just beyond her a river emptied into a huge opening in the ground. I think…I think it may have been the legendary World Beneath." She frowned. "But I—I probably dreamed about it only because I love the stories about the World Beneath so much. It probably just mixed into my dream. It probably didn't even mean anything important." She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

Tristan turned away, blinking hard, frustrated at how difficult it was to keep his emotions under control.

Celesta knew that her brother didn't like to be touched when he was struggling with his emotions, so she resisted the urge to hug him. Instead, she motioned for him to take a seat on the double Windsor style chair. "You don't have to talk about it right now. It's ok."

Tristan rubbed his forehead, frowning. "Arrg." He finally said in frustration. "If you would just yell at me and be really angry with me for failing training and so on, it would be so much easier."

"How can I be angry with you when I know without a doubt that you did the best that you could? I know you. When you do something you love, you put your whole self into it. If you succeed, you succeed big. If you fail, you fail big. Besides, you've lost someone you cared a whole lot about. How could I be angry with you when you're obviously hurting so much?"

Tristan sank into the chair and held his head in his hands. He said nothing for awhile and Celesta remained quiet, allowing him time to sort through his emotions. Finally he took a deep breath.

"Celesta?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to show you something, but can you promise that you'll keep it a secret?"

Celesta looked worried. "But is it bad?"

"No—not exactly. It's just…out of the norm…for Dinotopia."

"You know I'd like to keep a secret for you. I always did my best to when we were younger."

Tristan smiled slightly. "Yes, but you were always bad about eventually telling mother and father."

Celesta dropped her gaze to the floor. "True. I could only stand the guilt for so long. But I was younger then, and besides, those secrets were things you did that were naughty, like the time you skipped school and slipped out of the city with Sekani to practice for an upcoming sports competition. Or the time you let a young edaphosaurus lick the restaurant plates until they were spotless and then put them back into the cupboards without washing them. Or the time you were mad at Tiana so you hid all of her writing supplies and wouldn't tell her what happened to them. Or what about the time—"

"Ok, ok, no need to recall all the sins of my past." Tristan said. "This isn't quite the same, but if I can't trust the secret with you, I'll keep it to myself." He glanced down at the backpack, really wishing he could trust someone to bear the burden with.

Celesta sighed. "Whatever it is, I promise not to tell anyone, not even Tiana, or mother or father." She looked her brother in the eyes, but she clenched her hands together nervously. Something in the pit of her stomach warned her that whatever he was going to share couldn't be completely good, otherwise he wouldn't have such a desperate look haunting his eyes. But she loved her brother in spite of all his flaws. He was family and the sibling who had always seemed to understand her the most.

Tristan leaned down and opened the backpack and beckoned for his sister to step closer. "Instead of a skybax partner, this is what I brought back from the canyons."

Celesta peeked into the bag and immediately her eyes widened. She said nothing at first and simply stared at the egg as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Finally she reached down and brushed her fingers against the shell.

"It has dark blue and russet spots." She breathed. "I visited the hatchery once and I never saw an egg like this." She looked up again, her brow furrowed. "Is it alright? Is it warm enough?"

"It's just fine. I've been taking good care of it." Tristan replied.

Celesta gazed into space. "It belonged to the dying skybax in my dream, didn't it? And that's why you have it?"

Tristan swallowed hard. "It was Twilight's."

Celesta didn't hold back this time. She sat down beside her brother and wrapped her arms around him. "Tristan." She said quietly. "I'm so sorry."

Tristan struggled to keep his emotions under control as he squirmed out of his sister's hug. "Things are complicated now." He said, gruffly.

Celesta backed away, understanding her brother's actions. "But why do you want this egg to be a secret?"

"It's really complicated." Tristan replied. "To make a long story short, I learned that there was a small group of skybaxes in the canyons who don't get along with the other skybaxes. I was advised to stay away from them, but I didn't. I befriended one who I call Dark Wing and later I learned that he was mates with Twilight. I learned that both of the skybaxes were willing to set aside clan differences and intermingle. However, neither one of the skybax groups were accepting of this. I was in the middle of it all. I learned the hard way that we were all viewed as rule breakers and for upsetting the balance of what had always been. I know there is more to their history and why they are so hostile toward each other, but I haven't learned all of it yet. In the beginning, I had two willing skybax partners and in the end I had none. Twilight died after a brutal skybax disagreement, and Dark Wing brought me the egg to keep watch over, rather than promising a flight partnership with me."

"You never mentioned Dark Wing in your letters to us." Celesta said softly.

Tristan avoided her eyes and bent over to tuck the blanket around the egg again and cover it. "There are a lot of things I didn't mention in the letters."

"But why does the egg need to be a secret right now?"

"Because I don't want anyone making me take it to a hatchery where other people will ask way too many questions. Then they'll tell me what to do and the egg won't be fully under my care any longer. I don't want to risk anyone taking it from me."

"Why would anyone take it from you?"

"I don't know for sure that anyone would. I just don't want to risk it. People might think I'm not responsible enough to have it under my care, or they might think I'm too rebellious, or not reliable enough."

"Tristan, why would you even worry about any of those things?"

"Don't you see, Celesta? I failed Rider training! I disobeyed rules, crossed into forbidden territory, pursued things I was told to leave alone. In the end, my instructor told me that I hadn't proved to be reliable, which is an extremely essential trait to be a Rider." By now, Tristan was on his feet again, pacing while he spoke.

"So you're worried your reputation could get in the way of keeping the egg in your care. I see now." Celesta said, taking note of her brother's agitated manner.

"Yes. I need to care for this egg myself so that when the time is right after it hatches, I can bring it back to the canyons and introduce it to her kin."

Celesta arched and eyebrow. "Her? How do you know it's a her?"

Tristan halted his pacing. "I don't. It's just a guess. I know it sounds silly, but I've thought of it as a her ever since the egg came into my possession. I'm probably just—just…wishing for Twilight." His voice cracked.

Celesta stepped up to him and grasped his clenched fists. "Hey. Hey. It's ok. I'll help you." She'd looked up at her brother with a worried look in her eyes. She'd never seen him like this before. He looked as if he were on the verge of breaking. The muscles in his face were taught, his eyes were squinting, and his hands were still clenched in fists.

"Tristan. I believe you will be a Rider one day, even if it didn't work out this time. You still have a connection with the other skybax, right?"

Tristan plopped down onto the chair again and rubbed his face with his hands.

"Yes." He said, wearily. "I do."

"Well, maybe you should go back again soon." Celesta suggested. "Try the beginners' course again."

"I'm not going back right now." Tristan said firmly. "I came home because I needed some time away from there. And I…well…now I have this egg to take care of. And I don't plan on returning to the canyons again until it has hatched and she's ready to meet the other skybaxes of the canyons."

"So, judging by what you said earlier, there is no way you will take it to a Hatchery? There are others there who will help you look after it. They've got better equipment for tending to it anyway."

"No way." Tristan said resolutely. If Dark Wing would've wanted it to be taken to a Hatchery he would've made that clear. What he did make clear is that the egg is fully my responsibility." Tristan sighed deeply. "An orphaned egg can be cared for without fancy equipment. I make sure to keep it warm, turn it every few hours, and moisten the blanket around it from time to time."

"So what are you going to tell our parents?"

"Tristan groaned. "I don't know. I'm sure they're going to be upset when they find out that I…failed…the first level of training." He grimaced at the word 'failed,' but he couldn't think of a better way to word it. And he didn't want to repeat the story about Twilight. It still hurt so much to talk about it and he'd nearly lost it with Celesta.

"Rush hour at the restaurant will be over before long and they'll be coming home. Are you going to keep hiding the egg or let Mother and Father know about it?" Celesta asked.

Tristan frowned. "I guess I'll hold off telling them about it for tonight at least. I'm still trying to sort out all my thoughts. I'm afraid they wouldn't understand—especially Mother. I can totally see her trying to make me take it to a Hatchery. Besides, breaking the news about my failure is going to be more than enough for the rest of the family to take in for one evening anyway. Also I'd sure hate for word to get out about this egg. The city officials would view it all wrong, thinking I was in league with the Drifters somehow. Then they would hold me for questioning and demand that the egg be put in a Hatchery. I don't think I could ever face Dark Wing again if I let someone take the egg away from me."

Celesta looked troubled about his answer, but chose to keep her thoughts to herself at the moment. Instead she stepped up to her brother and risked giving him another hug.

"Thank you for sharing your secret with me. And I'm glad you're home again. I missed you an awful lot."

"Tristan hugged his sister back. "I missed you too. Now why don't you help me find a good hiding place for this egg? My room's available still, I hope." He managed to smile although his eyes still held an anxious look.

Celesta smiled back. "Yeah. Tiana and Sekani tried to take it over, but I wouldn't let them. Your things are all still there."

"Good." Tristan closed his backpack and pulled it over his shoulders once again. "You'd better show me the way." He teased. "I've been gone so long that I don't think I remember how to get there."

Celesta laughed and tugged at his arm. "How about I show you the way to the bath tub first? You look like you haven't bathed in days." She wrinkled her nose. "And you stink."

Tristan grinned slightly, feeling his dark mood lift a little. "Aw, come on. It's not that bad." He lifted an arm and sniffed. "Ah. Yup. I'm good for several more days, at least."

Celesta rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Why do guys always do that? It's so gross!" She gave him a little push toward the other room. "Go get a bath. Now."

"Alright, alright." Tristan replied, his grin widening. It was wonderful to be home once again. He'd missed his family tremendously. His grin faded when he remembered that he would have to present his difficult news once again for the rest of the family. Celesta was the easy one to talk to. It wouldn't be as easy to repeat it to the others.