Hah! So now I have a new laptop, and I will be able to resume my fanfic :D Cheers! Sorry if my writing style has changed dramatically...
Eragon and Bid'Daum both agreed that procrastinating weeks or possibly months would be worth their time if the only thing that Eragon mastered was magic. Because dragons are magical creatures, it made perfect sense that one should be proficient in magic arts if one wanted to communicate with and understand them. Eragon put himself through ridiculous exercises that Bid'Daum mocked—until he saw the results that is.
Because when Eragon went from creating tiny sparks to creating bonfires, lifting tiny pebbles to huge boulders, Bid'Daum had to concede that the method was working.
"Quite brilliant. I doubt any of the other magicians do it like this," he mumbled proudly.
"If they did, we'd have a whole lot more magicians, eh?" Eragon replied with a grin, satisfied with the results also.
He had his own tent again, which pleased him to no end. His pack and bed had a home, his sword didn't have to be carried around with him constantly (although it was good practice) and he finally had a place he could call 'home.'
Time passed quickly under his meticulous routine, days melted into weeks. Eragon wondered about the Queen's judgement as no moves were made and no reinforcements were called upon. He and Eliana spent many an evening discussing possible plans and various other aspects of their battle-hampered lives and the Queen's inaction was commented upon frequently. He was not particularly bothered about it, (though Eliana often became incensed at her Majesty) mainly because it gave him more time—something he relished greatly. However he enjoyed it, he knew it was unwise.
He spent much of his free time fraternizing with the soldiers under Eliana's command and the other verterans of the battle, searching for a companion crazy enough to come with him in his exile. Out of the hundreds of the inexperienced soldiers he found none who would be delirious enough to consider such a thing, and most of the veterans were too loyal to the Queen to do something as preposterous as that.
Out of the entire encampment Eragon saw one soldier that could possibly be deranged but trustworthy enough to go into the wilderness for a time. An elf named Omril had become fast friends with Eragon as soon as they were strong enough to talk after the battle. The thing that made Omril different from the hundreds of other soldiers that he had become friends with was quite simply his outlook on life.
For a few weeks the only person he had talked to one-on-one was Eliana, because of the encounter on the roadside, but from the fourth week onward his individual conversations grew by two—the Queen and Omril could be found alone with him as well as Eliana.
By now Bid'Daum was the personification of everything the Eragon hated about himself, all of his doubts and fears placed behind a mask of logic and smarts. For Eragon, logic was Bid'Daum's only redeeming quality. Thus it was not Eragon who began to have doubts about a companion, but Bid'Daum who pointed out that the dragon would provide plenty of company for a lonesome elf and that other elves could not be trusted in a venture already fraught with elvish risks.
"Remember the analogy of a baby-dragon being like a wild mutt? Well, mutts are 'man's best friend.' Elves enjoy the company of dogs as well. You're not going to be alone."
Eragon couldn't think of any counterarguments to that, and so he merely pursued his training and already present friendships in hope that Bid'Daum was wrong about the greater risk another elf would pose.
But when the heat of summer began to slowly evaporate and the trees around him began to take on bright earthy colors he knew he was going to make a choice—follow Bid'Daum's unquesitonable logic or be stubborn and just go about inviting a companion.
Both options were not exactly something he wanted to do.
So he procrastinated another few weeks, enjoying the last days of beautiful weather and being an idiot by not preparing for winter properly and—
Before he knew it the only trees with leaves on them were coniferous trees that you couldn't climb very easily but were great hiding places, and even sooner after that the entire world became a panorama of white covering the bare branches of the largest trees.
And even though they were not the best conditions to leave in (Eragon shuddered when he thought about how easy it was going to be to track him) he decided that if he didn't leave by the end of the year he wasn't going to leave at all. The only hints of leaving were dropped in large piles of snow around the campfire, which Eragon found appropriate.
He couldn't say goodbye to anyone.
"Except for you Bid'Daum. I'm going to claim my traits again and try to fix myself up. I'll have to find some use of my time in the middle of winter with a white dragon-egg that I'm probably going to lose because it'll be so well camoflauged."
"You're not getting rid of me that easily, genius," Bid'Daum grumbled. "I'm a parasite. You're a host. I'm—"
"Going to get kicked out by a medic named Eragon, which is me, and not you, you blasted leech."
"Why so much hostility all of a sudden?" Bid'Daum asked lazily.
"I'm irritated that I'm going to be leaving, most likely without another psychopath to keep me company," Eragon muttered sourly, scouting around and trying to find a way to hide his tracks.
"If you could fly you wouldn't need to worry about it," Bid'Daum said.
"Well I'm not a dragon," Eragon shot back.
"No, but you're going to be mothering one."
"See now if you paid rent it would be different. Then I would get some compensation for all the trouble you cause me," Eragon grumbled, irritated now that he couldn't find a way to cover his footprints.
"Well here's today's rent then: run in the trees. No one will notice if small bits of a branch aren't covered with the perfect amount of snow, and on the ground it'll look like a squirrel hopped along your path."
Eragon looked up at the deciduous trees that few would think of looking to. He had enjoyed climbing trees since he was a child, but he had never tried climbing from one tree to another.
"Try it and see if I'm wrong," Bid'Daum suggested haughtily.
"Alright you little pussycat, I'll do it in a few meters." Eragon walked up to a tree and shimmied up, trying to keep as much snow on the tree as possible. When he got up to a considerable height he balanced himself on a branch and did some calculations before he leapt lightly to another branch on another tree. When he landed easily he looked about, seeing a whole new realm of possibilities.
"Bid'Daum, you've bought yourself a month's stay," he told the annoying creation. He then laughed aloud, knowing there were none to hear him, and he ran through the branches, singing fierce bird calls as he easily maneuvered through the forest. After some time he returned to the first tree he had climbed on and retraced his path through the trees on the ground, verifying what Bid'Daum had said: nobody would notice the snow that his feet had knocked down.
Something was finally going to happen.