"I've got a name," said Tatiana excitedly.

Nanette glanced at her younger sister as she guided her by the hand to where the boys were waiting. "For my dragon?" she quested as a hill they crested(). "What?"

"Crimson Flame!" replied a gleeful Tati, clapping her hands. "Isn' that a wonderful, majestic name?"

"'Majestic'?" Nanette wrinkled her nose, releasing Tatiana's hand to give her a dumbstruck look. "'Crimson'? From where in Surda are you getting these words, Ti?"

Tatiana giggled, brining one hand over mouth as she almost burst into laughter. "From Jarsha, of course! He said them in his stories! And other ones, too, like 'slither' and 'soar' and 'shatter' and 'leap!'" Giggling yet harder, she grinned through the laughter and ran quickly away from her older sister, small feet pattering on the sun-drenched grass.

Nanette shrugged and followed.

--------------------------------------------

"Crimson Flame. I like that, but I don't know what it means."

Nanette stroked Merrick's thick mass of hair, as everyone was apt to do in the child's boisterous, happy-go-lucky presence. It was the way things were; no one held Alden as much, seeing as he was usually slumbering – like now – and Tatiana always giggled and ran away when someone tried to pick her up. Besides, she was older than Alden and Merrick, forced to get a rudimentary education from a human teacher named Dennell when she wasn't creatively running away from all who tried to catch her.

"Crimson means red. A flame is like the tongue of a fire – now do you understand?" she answered as she passed a hand through that mess of hair of his.

Merrick nodded, giggled and wiggled, signalling that he wanted to get down from his lofty perch. Nanette put him down, laughing. "But I thought all dragons have red fire…?"

"Aye, but I don't think much about what I learned in the past when I'm telling a story," Jarsha, who had remained silent for the larger part of this discourse, declared. "So, I'm technically not right when I'm telling Romena's tale – dragons are usually able to breathe fire after around six months, but I had Ethgrio first do it after three months. And, not to mention, Rider Eragon's Saphira breathes blue and yellow fire; her scales are blue. So, technically, being a white-beige dragon, Ethgrio's fire would have to be pale, maybe hued with a twisting column of marble-white flare."

It was a long and length explanation, but nonetheless a useful one. After all, what Jarsha said was true; in spite of that, though, there was a clever gleam in his eye. Nanette cocked her head to the side, watching – she knew that he wanted to use the phrase marble-white flare in his story. It was too obvious. Still undecided about what to name her dragon, she inquired the youthful storyteller about it.

"I think you should go with Crimson Flame," Jarsha replied, a grin contorting his features into a mask of happiness. "It has a nice ring to it." He paused, a flame-like glint flickering in those deep brown pools of his. "Maybe Milda would have an idea."

"What 'appened to Mil, anyway?" Conveniently and with perfect timing, Alden woke up. His eyes were bright, the movement was fluid, and nothing in or about his body gave away the fact that he'd been asleep a mere three seconds past. Indeed, if he had timed himself to rise at that exact time, the movement couldn't have been better. "I 'aven't seen her in a while."

Jarsha started to reply, but was cut off by the arrival of an all-too-familiar someone.

And no, it wasn't Milda.