David woke up well before dawn, jerked awake by a noise outside his room. He contemplated going back to sleep, then decided he wanted to ask Oonu about some things before everyone else arrived, and got up. He'd become fairly good at dressing quickly during his first round of training, and was ready to go in just a few minutes. Breakfast would come later.

The sky was still dark, although it was the pale gray of pre-dawn, and he could already see the horizon lightening. He stepped out onto the broad clifftop, and stopped almost immediately. Just a few feet away, Romana and Chaz were talking in low voices.

David hesitated, wrestling with the moral dilemma of eavesdropping or letting them know he was there. He was just curious enough to stay still and listen, feeling guilty all the while.

"- miss you," Romana said. "I wish you didn't have to go."

"I wish I didn't either," the elder dinosaur said. His voice was rough and held a note of practiced complaint. "Those sky galleys haven't gotten any more comfortable, you know, and the cold air makes my joints hurt. It's an absolutely terrible thing to put someone through."

Romana said something too softly for David to hear. Chaz made a coughing noise, which David belatedly realized was the sound that had woken him, and then said in a much gentler tone, "Patience, Mana. Everything will work out."

"I don't see how it can," Romana said. She sounded sad - so sad, in fact, that David risked discovery and peered around the edge of the building to see what was going on. Romana looked sad, too, standing with her hands clasped in front of her and her head down. Even in the dim light, he could see the forlorn cast to her features. "Maybe I should leave with you and work things out in Sauropolis."

Chaz coughed again, bobbing his short-frilled head in visible amusement. "You're starting to sound like me, child. Here, walk with me to the galley, and then get back to your skybax."

They moved off, still talking, and David continued on his way as well, although he was walking automatically, and not with the sense of purpose he'd set out with a few minutes ago.

What the hell was going on? The most self-assured, determined cadet in the entire city, who had told him point-blank thirty seconds after meeting him that she'd dreamed of nothing else her entire life - what had happened in the last few days to send her attitude spinning down? The only thing he could think of was her meeting with Marion. There was bad history there, obviously, but how could it be that bad?

He reached the rookery just as the first slanting rays of sunlight began edging over the world, lighting the rock spires with a rosy glow. Oonu was already there, as David had known he would be, and the veteran rider acknowledged his approach with a rather pleased, "Cadet David. You're early."

"Yes, sir," David said. He'd never understood why his father, one of the wealthiest people he'd ever met, would snap to and start "sirring" whenever his old CO visited, but even after the few weeks of training here, he knew that he would be calling Oonu "sir" for the rest of his life. Once ingrained, it was a difficult habit to break. "I, uh, wanted to ask you a few questions, if that's all right."

Oonu gestured. "Go ahead."

He hadn't expected the easy response, and it took him a moment to get the words out. "Um... Romana said something about her mother being a rider. Is that right?"

"Sylvia Denison," Oonu said immediately, nodding with a clear light of affection in his eyes. "My father was her instructor. She was a gifted rider - had an unusually deep rapport with her skybax."

"What happened to her?"

"She left Canyon City soon after William Denison died. I believe she returned to the hatchery and began raising orphans. This was during the plague years."

Plague years? No one had ever mentioned anything about a plague, but then his education had been pretty rushed. David wanted to ask, but Oonu was still talking, and he knew better than to interrupt.

"It was a great loss to the community. Sylvia had... an enthusiasm for life. It was contagious; everyone was her friend from the moment she smiled. Romana has her spirit, but she's more like her great-grandfather, I've been told." Oonu paused and gave David an evaluative glance. "Understand that I'm only telling you this because you have to work with her."

Taken slightly aback, David said, "Yes sir. I- I understand that."

"Good." Oonu looked over David's shoulder. "I suggest, however, that you address any further questions to Romana herself, and that you do it at some other time."

David looked behind him as well, and saw the sun cresting over the horizon. He also saw the line of cadets making their way to dawn report. Romana was at the end of the line and moving slowly, glancing back at the departing shape of the sky galley. Worry for her tugged at him. Whatever was going on, he hoped she snapped out of it soon.

The cadets lined up and Oonu launched his morning lecture with a stern warning against trying night landings. Then he informed them about the new direction of their training.

"You've learned how to fly solo," Oonu said, striding to one end of the line and back again, "and you've learned how to fly as part of a squadron. Flying with a partner, however, is very different. It takes skill, communication, and care on behalf of everyone involved. You will be running an intricate course. Pay attention. Our newest instructors, Strongwing and Galen, will be demonstrating with their wingmates Zenith and Lorna."

Everyone obediently stepped closer to the edge and watched the two skybaxes and their riders fly into view. They swooped and dove and soared around the mesas and spires that made up Canyon City; it was an intricate course, but not too hard to remember. The most difficult thing for David was holding his vertigo in check as he watched.

Strongwing and Zenith finished the course by passing within a mere foot of each other. Then they broke off into two separate flight paths.

"Skill, communication, and care," Oonu reminded them all.

And Romana was barely talking to him and was buried in some kind of personal problem that had her distracted in a big way. David inwardly winced. This was going to be bad, especially if Oonu called for them first. Oonu had demonstrated a disturbing tendency to do that.

But Oonu stopped in front of two other cadets. "Kiyoshi, Elwin. You will attempt the flight first."

The two cadets snapped to attention, then headed for the platform. Kiyoshi climbed onto his skybax first - David wasn't sure of the pterodactyl's name - and spiraled in a holding pattern as he waited for Elwin. Then they began the course.

Thirty minutes and much correction from Oonu later, two exhausted skybaxes deposited their equally exhausted riders on the platform. Kiyoshi and Elwin staggered to the end of the line, taking up positions next to David and Romana.

"Great eruptions, that was hard," Elwin said under his breath, and Kiyoshi nodded emphatically. "I hope he goes easier on the rest of you."

There was a general murmur of "sure he will" and "yeah, right" from the other cadets within earshot.

To David's relief, Aolani and Noam were next. They started out poorly, making beginner's mistakes and nearly colliding with each other several times, much to their skybaxes' audible annoyance. Then their flight evened out, although they still had to repeat the course twice more.

"What's up with them?" David asked Kiyoshi while Oonu was preoccupied with correcting the two riders.

Kiyoshi shrugged. "I don't know."

Romana suddenly leaned over and whispered, "They're cumspiritik."

"No way," Elwin hissed, looking astonished. "Since when?"

"In Waterfall City," Romana said.

Elwin shook his head. David took a chance and asked Romana, "What does that mean, 'cumspiritik'?"

Oonu had stopped shouting instructions, making it fairly dangerous to talk without fear of rebuke, but Romana stretched up and whispered, very softly, into his ear, "It's a dolphin word. It means 'breathing together.' Aolani and Noam are married."

Her breath was warm against the skin of his face, even with the incessant winds whistling across the cliff. That, along with the jolt of electricity that ran the length of his spine, surprised him more than the words.

Noam and Aolani landed to scattered applause. Oonu reviewed the line and then called out, "Romana and David."

David squared his shoulders and stepped out. Now or never, do or die, sink or swim... there were a lot of banal sayings for occasions like this, weren't there? None of them helped change the fact that he was probably about to humiliate himself in front of his squadron.

He let Romana go first, then climbed onto the platform. Freefall croaked a greeting, shaking his big beak from side to side before he took off. David felt the familiar gut-wrenching sensation of falling - the skybax had his name for a reason - before the powerful wings carried him upward.

Romana and Stratus were waiting for him. Unlike the other two sets of cadets who had flown already, Romana signaled for David to wait before beginning. "I've seen this a thousand times," she called to him as they spiraled on updrafts. "Stay level and we'll be fine."

"Right," he called back, and then they were away. As always, the flight was both exhilarating and demanding; Freefall did most of the work, but David was as much a part of the process as the muscles lifting the wings. You didn't steer a skybax, but you did give them directions, and you sure as hell held on when they started looping and rolling.

And it was harder to fly with another a person, keeping even with their skybax's wingtip while navigating a path through sheer rock walls. Less than a minute out, David veered too close to Romana and nearly sent them both crashing into a spire, which earned a good deal of shouting from Oonu. After that, though, they flew perfectly - far better than Noam and Aolani. By the end of the first run, Freefall and Stratus were even flapping in synchronicity with each other, and there was no shouted order to go around again.

Oonu met them with a rare smile. "Very well done, cadets."

David grinned, adrenaline flowing and all of his concerns over the partnership fading away. "Thank you, sir."

The squadron repeated the run in the afternoon, and twice again the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, until everyone was flying true on their first try. During that time David managed to send out several postal birds to Vidabba, mostly to Marion. He got replies to all of them; Dad was making good progress in his Dinotopian education, Marion said that she missed his company but was very busy with the farm and would answer him further at a later time, and Karl - who he had not written to - sent him a bird that sang the chorus of "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

David resisted the impulse to kill the messenger, but it was a near thing.

He also sent a bird to Zippo in Waterfall City, and received a lengthy, enthusiastic written response by the very next day. Zippo was delighted to hear from him, and was even more delighted to answer his questions, which delved into a most interesting - albeit sorrowful - time in Dinotopian history. The plague Oonu had referred to, as it turned out, was a rather nasty disease that had stricken most of the dinosaur population several years ago; their levels hadn't quite been the same since. It had also claimed the lives of many humans, and, because of forced burnings, dramatically altered the face of the island's cities. Waterfall City - the city that David knew as the capital - was the second capital in the island's history, he was surprised to discover. The government had been moved from Sauropolis during the height of the plague because quarantine was easier in the isolated waterfalls, and it had never quite moved back, although certain parts of the bureaucracy had returned to their original home. It looked like his education had been more neglected than he'd thought.

Meanwhile, Romana had stopped talking to him again. That was bad, because at the end of the week Oonu called them all, pair by pair, to see how they were doing.