Volcano Visit
#37 of The Life and Times of Jarzyl Mintaka (Slice of Life Stories)
Two dragon fledglings go on a day trip.
It's been a while since I've last uploaded. When I get stuck in a writing rut, I write random short (or not?) slice-of-life dragon story bits. Sometimes these are useful as worldbuilding exercises, sometimes they are just fun to scribble out. Anyway, here's Jarzyl and Atlas going on a flight to see a historical site. (8,800 words)
Jarzyl Mintaka laid sprawled out on the floor, with her wings thrown open against the cool stone surface. As the dragon fledgling lay on her back, she lazily juggled a smooth, flat pebble between her four paws. With each toss of the pebble up into the air, Jarzyl's eyes tracked its exact movements, and silently she willed it to deviate from its trajectory--if the pebble had gone higher than it should have or changed direction mid-air, that would be a clear sign that she was using magic to influence it.
Her father had stone magic, and he could easily have made that little pebble float, spin, and otherwise move through the air however he wished. Jarzyl didn't have a particular interest in getting stone affinity, but at her age she would surely soon be getting magic of some sort, and so the young dragon watched for signs.
But the stone pebble only followed parabolic arcs as she tossed it up from one paw to another, and no hint of nascent magical power presented itself. Jarzyl caught the pebble with a hindpaw, then she lowered her leg down and let the tiny rock clack against the floor.
Turning her head, she idly stared out the open balcony doors from her bedroom. The urban skyscape of the City of Wings was grand and gleaming, with immense skyscrapers stretching up into the bold blue morning sky. Close and far, countless dragons could be seen flying through the city's bustling airspace, smoothly flapping their way from one point to another.
Dragons came in a wide variety of scale colours, but one particular individual caught her eye--not for having a vibrant hue or even an interesting pattern like stripes, but because he was the exact opposite. A dragon with scales of a flat, sooty black colour was gliding with wings held steady, on a heading right towards her. Though it was hard to estimate a dragon's size while they were in flight without anything to compare against, that black dragon's wings and tail were just slightly oversized compared to the rest of him--a ratio that marked him as a fledgling, just like her.
Jarzyl's neck frill perked up, and she flipped over and pushed into a stand. Over the course of less than a minute, her friend--whose name was Atlas--quickly went from being a distant point of black in the sky, to coming in for final approach. Atlas was a nocturnal dragon, and he was wearing a pair of dark goggles to protect his sensitive eyes against the daylight sun, but his scales were so dark already that the dark lenses just blended in. Breaking into a grin, Jarzyl unfurled her wings and waved.
Atlas waved back, by briefly rocking his flight path from left to right before he resumed his descent. As he entered those final seconds right before landing, Jarzyl scampered out onto her balcony and stood right on the edge of the ledge. She waved her wings again, then playfully leapt from side to side, deliberately getting in the way.
At first Atlas altered course to try and get around her, but then he called her bluff and flew right towards the middle of the ledge and doorway. Jarzyl waited until the very last second before finally leaping backwards--though not far enough, because Atlas still crashed into her and the two fledglings went tumbling into her room.
With wings and limbs awkwardly entwined, Jarzyl ended up roughly lying on top of Atlas. He was thrown onto his back with wings spread open, while she was sitting over him--an ideal position for her to smugly grin down at her friend. "Hello! Good morning! You just made a terrible landing."
"I wonder why?" Atlas drily replied, making her laugh.
"Hehaha." Jarzyl reached for Atlas's dark goggles and gingerly lifted those reflective lenses up to his forehead, exposing his dark, wide eyes. The two fledglings stared at each other for a moment, then Jarzyl grabbed one of Atlas's horns and made his head wobble. "Hehehehe."
"Good morning to you too." Atlas untangled his limbs from hers, but Jarzyl was still lying atop his body, and she resisted his gentle prods. "Are you going to get off me?"
"What if I don't?" Jarzyl tapped Atlas on his snout. "What would you do if I just pinned you here, forever?"
Atlas made a casual shrug of his wings. "I'd just wait. You get bored fast."
"That's reasonable." Jarzyl still didn't get off her friend, though.
Atlas glanced around the modest messiness of Jarzyl's bedroom, before glancing back up at her. "I've said it before, but you know we aren't hatchlings anymore?"
Jarzyl narrowed her eyes and glared down at her friend. His sooty black scales contrasted sharply against her own amber-orange colouration, but in size and stature they were rough equals. Atlas had a lean, lanky form, with wings and tail slightly oversized compared to the rest of his body--that was the general physique for most dragon fledglings, as they rapidly grew and learned all the complexities of flight. "Yes? Obviously I know we're fledglings. What's your point?"
"I..." Atlas thought for a moment, then he shrugged. "Never mind."
Jarzyl stuck her tongue out playfully. "Caden, Indry, and maybe Pyxis will be coming in the afternoon, but for the rest of the morning it's only you and me." Spreading her wings, Jarzyl gestured around. "We're all alone here. My parents left this morning for a trip."
"A business trip?"
"Vacation."
"Oh, that's nice. The city's moving into the northern regions, so I guess your parents must be visiting the Grendium Forest Preserve?"
Now it was Jarzyl's turn to shrug. "That sounds about right." Finally she got off Atlas, rolling off to lie right beside him, with some of her weight resting on his wing. Jarzyl swept her tail against the floor until she found the stone pebble again, and she resumed juggling it from paw to paw. "What shall we do today?"
Atlas was quiet again, then he tried to get up. This was made difficult because Jarzyl was still lying atop his wing, but after some repeated pulls and some half-hearted grumbling on Jarzyl's part, he managed to tug his wing free. Furling both wings smoothly onto his back, Atlas went to the other side of Jarzyl's bedroom. "I have an idea, actually. Can I use this?" he asked, pointing to a large, rounded pit in the ground that was filled with white sand.
Jarzyl's gaze briefly darted towards her friend, then back to the pebble she was juggling. "Of course. Go ahead."
The device was called a light field projector, or simply a sandpit. The sand in the base of the device was enchanted, so each of the individual grains could move about and change colour, forming objects and images inside the projector.
As Atlas fiddled with the control pedestal, magical energy flowed through the projector and the sand whirled about as if caught by a breeze, before freezing in mid-air to form flat geometric shapes. The projector first displayed a simulacrum of a stadium, with tiny projections of dragons flapping their way through laps--Jarzyl had yesterday been watching a replay of the latest aerial races. Atlas instead switched the projector to display a bird's eye view of map, filled with forested hills and snowy mountains. "Want to do something unsafe?" he casually asked.
Surprised, Jarzyl missed her catch and almost hit herself in the face with her pebble. The stone landed on the floor with a sharp clack. "What?" Whereas she had a propensity towards adventure, Atlas was usually the sensible, moderating force of reason. It was a thrilling reversal now to hear him suggest danger. "Yes, definitely!"
"I haven't even told you what it is yet." Atlas appeared amused, though Jarzyl's dauntless enthusiasm made him hesitate slightly. "Hmm."
Rolling upright, Jarzyl scampered over towards her friend's side to peer into the sandpit's boundaries. "What's your idea?"
Atlas gestured towards the projected map. Up close, Jarzyl now recognized that this wasn't just any random natural landscape. Right in the centre of the map, hovering in the sky, was their current location--the City of Wings. This view was showing the terrain surrounding Avaeria, the flying city of the drakken. "Want to go out-city?"
"Oh!" Jarzyl's neck frill twitched, and her tail swished uncertainly. "Out of the city? To the Outer Colonies?"
"Let me explain, then you let me know what you think," Atlas said. "You know all those training hunts that we have to go for now that we're fledglings?"
Jarzyl nodded. She, Atlas, and the rest of their friends and schoolmates had become fledglings, so their curriculum was no longer confined to the classroom. Now that they were able to fly, the city's Education Division had started to take them out for training hunts where they flew out from the city for excursions. Though the name implied that they would be learning how to_hunt_, most of these excursions did not involve actual hunting. Most often they would fly to nearby drakken outposts for tours and visits, to learn about history or industry. These included vast farms that kept the drakken population fed, quaint old villages that had once belonged to long-disbanded clans, massive bustling mining complexes that dug out resources to be refined and sent to the city on airship convoys, or all sorts of other places.
On occasion they also went into the wilderness to learn about science, geography, and how the natural world operated. Sometimes they did get to try diving at wild hares or sneaking up on deer, but hunting was not the focus of most training hunts. They were excursions intended for learning and discovery, and so Jarzyl loved training hunts. Much as she enjoyed flight school, training hunts were her favourite simply because it appealed to her sense of adventure and curiosity.
Blinking, Jarzyl refocused on Atlas, who had been saying something. "I was looking over school notes I borrowed from a friend who's a couple of years older than us, and I found a list of all the training hunts he had been on when he was our age. I compared that against the list of training hunts planned for us this year, and there were a few interesting differences."
Jarzyl nodded. "What differences?"
"Mostly minor things, catering to the exact flight path scheduled for the city. It wouldn't make sense to have a training hunt featuring a visit to a farm during the winter when the fields aren't planted, for example." Atlas turned back towards the light field projector, with that map showing the city's current location. "But right when Avaeria was passing by this part of its flight path, there used to have been an interesting training hunt."
Atlas curled his tail forward and used his tail tip to point at one specific mountain peak. The enchanted sand was slightly disrupted, and it distorted in colour in a small region as it flowed around his tail. "Right over there. That's Ikalato's Cone and--"
Jarzyl's eyes widened, and she gasped softly. "Huuh! Ikalato's Cone? I know what that is! It's the... that's the old Mintaka volcano fortress, right?!"
Atlas raised an eye ridge. "I believe it's Clan Ikalato that controls the territory. Hence the name, Ikalato's cone?"
Jarzyl flicked her neck frill. "My clan ate Ikalato a long time ago. They're under the banner alliance now, so that volcano fortress belongs to Mintaka now."
Jarzyl was from Clan Mintaka, whereas Atlas wasn't, and he looked amused. "Sure, if you say so. But it's not a fortress--the cone itself hasn't been habited in a century due to geological instability. The remaining settlements are in the nearby valleys. There's an iron mine there, and a few farms and vineyards making use of the volcanic ash that enriches the soil." Atlas gestured to the projection. "As I was saying, the city is currently flying near the eastern extent of the Julnir mountain range, and there used to be an excursion to visit the summit to learn about plate tectonics. But starting from last year, they swapped out the volcano for a visit to the Echoed Valley Vineyards, which we'll be going on next week."
With intense curiosity, Jarzyl peered at the terrain projection. "Why did they change it? Why visit some grape vineyards instead of a volcano?" Thinking back to what Atlas had said earlier, she excitedly added, "Geological instability? Is it erupting?!"
Atlas chuckled. "Heh, no. Ikalato's Cone hasn't erupted in five generations."
"Then why is it unsafe? Why'd they change the excursion there?"
"I asked Drak Tasilus about it, and he said that the flight was too tough for a lot of fledglings."
Jarzyl snorted dismissively. "Pffft. Flight too tough?" She tried to make an estimate of the map's scale compared to the size of the flying city. "It doesn't look that far."
"It's not far at all. Flight time is one hour and a half to the mountain peak, then one hour to return to the city. I calculated all the winds and distances earlier this morning." Atlas grinned faintly. "The hard part is the weather."
"Weather?" Nudging her friend aside, Jarzyl worked the projector's control pedestal. She tapped a button so that instead of merely displaying the landscape that the city was flying over, it also showed the current weather. The projection added shadows to the forest, hills, the city, and everything from the morning sunlight, but there were no clouds visible.
Moving across her room, Jarzyl stuck her head out the balcony window and looked upwards--the sky above was a clear blue. She then looked down, and as her home was on the edge of a city sector, there was a chasm-like gap before the next city sector, and she could get a view all towards the ground far below over which Avaeria was flying. It was clear skies all around, with no clouds to be seen anywhere. "Look clear to me."
Atlas shrugged. "Mountains cause rough air. It's not an easy flight, but Drak Tasilus said that we could certainly make it with no trouble if we felt up for a challenge. So, are you up for it? Just you and me--want to go check out a volcano?"
"I think... I..." Jarzyl's voice trailed off as she thought about it.
The whole point of being a fledgling was that she was now big (and mature) enough to use her wings to fly entirely on her own, bringing a vastly increased level of independence. And she certainly was enjoying all that newfound freedom. As a hatchling, Jarzyl always had to rely on her parents to carry her to school every day--whereas now as a fledgling, she was expected to wake herself up on time, and fly herself to school.
Being able to fly meant that she could go where she wanted, whenever she wanted. Jarzyl often visited her friends' homes, or public spaces such as parks, eateries, plazas, and even libraries. However, that was all _within_Avaeria. She was only used to leaving the city for training hunts, and what Atlas was proposing was what would have been a training hunt a few years ago--except this time there would be no supervision or guidance, just the two of them and their wits.
Jarzyl's tail flicked slowly from side to side. She immediately wished that she could ask her parents what they thought about this idea, but they were away for a trip. The choice now was entirely hers. "Atlas, uhhh..."
Atlas noticed her hesitation. He glanced away, and a flicker of disappointment crossed his expression, so subtle that someone who didn't know him as well as her would not have noticed. "If you're not keen on the idea, we can do something else. I just thought... I didn't think Caden, Indry, Flicher, or any of the others would be interested in a flight out of the city just to visit a snow-covered volcano crater."
"Aha, I'm your first choice for adventure! First among friends!" Throwing open her wings, Jarzyl grinned widely. "Yeah, let's definitely do this! What do we need to do? Do we just... just fly? Now?" She made a half step towards the window, glancing at her friend for guidance.
Atlas smiled faintly. "You might want to put on your flight harness first. And I was thinking we could pack some food to eat for lunch there?"
The more Jarzyl thought about it, the more she liked this entire idea. "Yes. Yes! Adventure awaits!"
"We're turning left, heading north-northwest," Atlas announced, and then he dipped her left wing and pulled into a gradual turn.
"North-northwest!" Jarzyl cheerfully echoed, and she smoothly altered course to follow her friend. Centrifugal forces tugged at her body, and her tail tip was buffeted as it dipped into the oncoming airflow. Her natural compass kept her aware of her direction, but Jarzyl simply followed after Atlas, trusting him to know where they were going.
Once they were headed in the right direction, Atlas levelled off and flapped his wings a few times to pick up some speed again. He glanced over his shoulder to check on her, and Jarzyl rocked her flight path from left to right playfully in response. Then she smoothly took up position again to his rear and right, where the wind currents spilling off his wingtip created a region of reduced drag that eased her flight.
Atlas's wingbeats settled into a strong, steady pace, and Jarzyl synchronized the rhythm of their wingbeats to maximize energy saved. That was something they had learned in flight school. "Good day for flying," Atlas commented.
"Indeed it is! Onwards!" Jarzyl declared. She kicked out her four legs with excitement, before tucking them against her body again. "Let's go see that volcano!"
Calm and confident, the two fledglings flew on. After leaving Jarzyl's home, they had been flying along in the wide gap between two city sectors. "Prepare to descend," Atlas said after a few minutes.
"Descend?" Jarzyl asked.
"Yeah, we always fly on the sunside. Let's go shadeside this time," Atlas said.
"Sure. Lead the way." Both fledglings locked their wings and went into a glide, slowly trading altitude to maintain their forward speed.
Up ahead was a broad wall of metal, glass, and stone, but one where the bottom was undercut by more sky. Windows and balcony ledges jutted out at regular intervals from the structure--they were coming up on a sector border. The two fledglings picked up speed as they descended faster, and then they flew underneath the city sector and levelled off again.
Jarzyl blinked as her pupils widened, adapting to the sudden shift from direct sunlight into shadow. Atlas also slid his dark goggles up to his forehead again, since the dimness was well suited to nocturnal drakken eyes. They had just entered shadeside--Avaeria's literal underbelly.
As the city of the drakken powered its way across the sky, both its sun-facing upper side and its perpetually shaded lower side were covered with countless buildings that stretched upwards or downwards like stalactites and stalagmites. The vast natural landscape over which the city was flying was a beautiful sight, and the brightness of the mid-morning sunlight on that hilly terrain made all the buildings of the shadeside look all the darker by comparison.
Though deep in the city's shadow, this region of Avaeria was just as busy as the sunside. Dragons leapt off from balconies and into flight, entering the busy airspace as each headed towards other destinations on the shadeside, or even made their way towards sector borders to fly up towards the sunside. Airships powered their way around, with wispy trails of chilly vapour washing from their thruster ports as they delivered cargo around Avaeria.
Just as was the case with the city's upper side, banners and flags adorned almost every building, flapping proudly in the wind. The banners indicated clan affiliation or were simply navigational aids that had the building's name or number, while the flags showed the local wind direction to aid dragons in their flight. Jarzyl faintly wished that she was wearing her own wingtip pennants, which were amber-orange to match her scales, and had the Mintaka clan insignia--but they were to be flying for considerable time today, and those flags would have added a small amount of drag.
Unlike the sunside, the buildings of Avaeria's shadeside were perpetually kept illuminated by artificial lights. Light spilled out from inside windows, giving glimpses of interiors showing everything from residential homes, office spaces, commercial districts, and even factories. Aside from the brilliant beams of sunshine that leaked down in the gaps between city sectors, Avaeria's immense thruster units also threw out unearthly blue glows that dimly illuminated thick clouds of vapour that spilled out from within.
As they flew by a thruster panel, Jarzyl tilted her head to stare. This was another thing that was different from sunside--in the middle of some of the sectors in shadeside, huge hexagonal areas were devoid of buildings where the city's thrusters were located. Unthinkably powerful enchantments were at work there, combining stone, frost, and electric magic to keep the city afloat. Airships worked in much the same way, albeit at a different scale, and it was all very different from how dragons could simply flap their wings and fly. The immense energy fields of the city's thrusters rattled Jarzyl's internal compass--it wasn't enough to disrupt her innate sense of direction, but it was a silent, invisible reminder of drakken technological advancement.
Atlas glanced back at her again, and her curious expression amused him. "Jarz, you don't come here often, do you?"
"No. It's dark down here." Usually if Jarzyl needed to go somewhere on Avaeria's shadeside, she would simply fly to the sunside of the corresponding city sector, then ride an elevator down through the city's depths and find a walkway to the appropriate building.
Shadeside wasn't truly dark as night, because there was daylight that reflected off the true ground far below the city. However, the natural landscape far below the city was just so much brighter that shadeside looked dark by comparison. It was dim enough that if not for Atlas leading the way, Jarzyl would have had to fly much slower and keep a close lookout for other dragons whose flight paths could intersect hers.
Unlike her, Atlas had no problems seeing in the dimness. Diurnal dragons like Jarzyl made up most of the drakken population, with their vibrant, colourful scale patterns and their day-capable eyes. In contrast, nocturnal dragons like Atlas were the minority, and they possessed extremely light-sensitive eyes and usually had dull, dark coloured scales. They were both dragons, but just different subspecies who were specifically suited to hunt at different times. Now in modern drakken civilization, diurnals and nocturnals were well mixed in clans and families, workplaces and schools--however, it wasn't always an even balance.
Nocturnals were overrepresented in shadeside, though still in the minority down here. There was no moral judgement about the fact that there were more nocturnal dragons living and working in the city's underside. The simple fact was that the underside of the city was darker than the upper side, at least during the day, which suited the respective dragon subspecies. Diurnal dragons could easily tolerate direct sunlight in the sunside, whereas nocturnal dragons had to wear dark goggles to protect their eyes. Meanwhile, diurnals in the shadeside could have trouble seeing in the relative dark, where nocturnals had no such problem.
Jarzyl grinned as she saw a huge Mintaka clan banner dangling from one of the larger buildings, and she grinned wider when they flew by a restaurant and the delicious odour of food filled her nostrils. Loud music was briefly audible as they swept by another building, but then the melodic sounds were quickly gone as they sped away. "Maybe we should come here more often. It's odd now that I think about it, but I've spent more time exploring the sunside of certain distant city sectors compared to exploring the shadeside of even sector one, right below my own home."
Atlas laughed softly. "Heh. Shadeside isn't _that_different compared to sunside. They're two sides of the same coin."
The two fledglings flew onwards. Jarzyl's home was in sector one, the very centremost region of Avaeria, so they had a good distance to fly before they even left the city. Flying underneath the city, the structures and buildings were like a lid over the world, as if it were the thickest, most opaque, and certainly most solid cloud layer she had ever seen.
But eventually they flew through Avaeria's outskirts, where the buildings were relatively newly constructed, and there were significantly less dragons flying through the nearby airspace. And then came the transition--up ahead they could clearly see the very edge of the city. Saying nothing, Atlas calmly reached up and pulled down his dark goggles to cover his eyes again.
In comparison, Jarzyl took a deep breath and prepared herself. She held that inhalation right until suddenly the shadow had ended, and they were cruising through clear, open sky. "Skrrryyyaaahhh!" As loud as she could, Jarzyl let out a proud, cheery roar. Her voice cracked slightly near the end, but the sound she made was quite clearly a roar. Hatchlings couldn't roar, but drakken could, and fledglings sort of could.
Brilliant, glorious sunlight bathed the two fledglings from above, and Jarzyl grinned at the morning sun. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked at the sight of Avaeria as they left the city behind. They were flying relatively fast, yet the sheer immensity of the drakken city meant that it was still a huge sight and would be visible from a great distance.
Looking forward, Jarzyl flapped her wings to take up position behind Atlas's wingtip again. She deliberately maneuvered too close and bumped her head against his tail as it extended straight behind him. "Hey! Hey! Atlas!"
Atlas was unperturbed. "Yes, Jarz?"
"You didn't roar! You're supposed to roar when you leave the city. That's the tradition!" Jarzyl cheerfully exclaimed.
Atlas turned his head to glance at her. His eyes were obscured behind those dark lenses he was wearing, but Jarzyl knew that he was looking at her. He didn't say anything though.
"Roar! Come on. Do it," Jarzyl demanded.
"I don't roar," Atlas calmly said.
"Dragons roar and you're a dragon. Come on. Get yourself excited for the adventure. I've never heard you roar before. I never even heard you attempt to roar. Why not?"
"It just seems... overly dramatic to make so much noise and draw attention to yourself," Atlas replied.
Jarzyl looked behind again. Every second that passed, they were further and further from the city. "There's no one else nearby but me. Give me a roar! We can do it together if you're too embarrassed to do it alone."
"There's no need to roar, so I shall refrain," Atlas politely replied.
Jarzyl altered her flight path to headbutt Atlas's hindquarters, but he smoothly dodged her playful move. "One day I'll make you roar for me..."
Jarzyl enjoyed the flight. The sky was clear with visibility as far as her eyes could see, and she was with excellent company for an excursion. Atlas was one of her closest friends. They held conversation through much of the time they spend flying, discussing any topic that came to mind--ranging from the spectacular mountainous landscape they were flying over, to the latest advice they'd been taught in flight school, or even completely random topics.
Occasionally their discussion gave way to a simple silence, where there was nothing but the woosh of the wind, and the steady thump of their wingbeats--yet even this silence felt comfortable, where Jarzyl felt no need to force chatter, and eventually the conversation would pick up again when another topic came to mind.
The two fledglings swapped back and forth several times, alternating who was flying in the lead and who was following the other. They had both studied their planned flight route before they'd even left Jarzyl's home, and it was a straightforward, direct path to Ikalato's Cone. Atlas occasionally took out a map chart from his flight harness just to double check, but even though it was attached to a clipboard it still fluttered slightly in the wind.
The more distance they gained from Avaeria, the more impressive of a sight the city was. From afar, the City of Wings resembled a colossal floating island of greyish stone and gleaming metal. It was as if a mountain had torn itself from the ground and hung suspended in the air, dwarfing even the hills it was floating over. Even after some more flying, their travel was not enough to have put the city out of view, such was its huge size and elevated position in the sky.
Up ahead however, the rolling hills gradually transitioned into an immense mountain range. Forest greenery covered the lower peaks, but the highest of the mountains were capped by white snow. The two dragon fledglings headed towards a gap in the mountain range, where there was a valley. Such was the height of the mountains that they even though they were flying high in the sky, there were some peaks that rose taller than them still.
Jarzyl could see misty waterfalls tumbling off mountainsides, with winding streams flowing down and merging to become rivers. Bright midday sunlight reflected off the valley's rivers and lakes, glinting off the smooth surface. Drakken settlements were also visible in some sections of the valley, with forests trimmed back to make way for farms and vineyards nestled alongside windswept meadows filled with colourful wildflowers. In the distance, Jarzyl could even see several other dragons flapping their way across the valley in the opposite direction, but the wild beauty of the environment was undiminished by the scant few traces of civilization.
"Well, this is nice," Atlas drily noted.
At that moment, Jarzyl was glad that Atlas was in the lead, because she was so captivated by the natural landscape that she didn't pay much attention to flying straight. "It's so... pretty!"
"Very pretty. Next week on our training hunt, we'd be descending now to head down towards those vineyards in the valley." Atlas briefly glanced back at her. "But instead... look up ahead," he suggested.
The valley wove left and right slightly, flanked on both sides by mountainous ridges, but then straight ahead there was one particular mountain that stood out. Shaped like a cone, the mountain's top was lopped off and flattened out, giving it a distinctive shape that made it stand out around all the surrounding peaks. Jarzyl instantly recognized it from the terrain projection they had been looking at earlier. "Oh! That's the mountain. The volcano!! Wow!"
Just like the other high mountains, Ikalato's Cone was summited by white, and its position at the end of the valley made for a picturesque view. Jarzyl had imagined rivers of lava flowing down the sides, or at least a smoke column spewing from the top, but the volcano appeared like a normal mountain.
"Let's swap! I have the lead," Jarzyl called, and then she flew ahead of Atlas.
"You have the lead." Atlas smoothly dropped back to fly in wingmate position behind her right wingtip. With their destination now in sight, Jarzyl eagerly picked up some speed, and Atlas had no trouble keeping up with her. The volcano was still far away enough that the distance made it appear faintly blue through the air, even though the sky was perfectly clear. As they got closer however, that cloudless sky turned out to be deceptive.
As Jarzyl was getting closer to Ikalato's Cone and the smooth valley basin was giving way to the slopes of the immense volcano, the air started to shift around her. There had been a decent headwind blowing against their direction of travel, but then suddenly the wind changed and blew from the side instead.
"Woah." Jarzyl let out a surprised noise, and she tilted her wings to keep flying straight towards the volcano. "Wind shear."
"Is this the rough air we were warned about? Let's have a little separation," Atlas replied, and he slowed down to increase the distance between them. That gave them both more room to manoeuvre without risking a collision.
Jarzyl grinned as she felt the sideways wind washing over her scales and tugging at her body. "This is fine. We've flown through worse before." Glancing up, she looked towards the volcano that was now taking up a huge swath of her forward vision. "I don't see any lava--woah!!"
An intense, rapid downdraft suddenly swept over her, and Jarzyl yelled as the moving air slammed her groundward. Normally a dragon's wings generated an upwards lifting force that kept them aloft, but the abrupt downdraft was so powerful that the force went inverted--in a split second Jarzyl's wings were half folded downwards, and she was violently shoved down by the mass of rapidly moving air.
"Ah...!" Reacting on instinct, Jarzyl threw her wings back open and flapped hard, tilting her body upwards to regain lost altitude. "Atlas, are you...?" She glanced back to see if her friend was alright, but the violent winds had blown them out of formation, and she couldn't see where he had gone.
Jarzyl beat her wings and tried to restabilize her flight. The initial shock from the downdraft had faded, yet now she felt increasing worry as she kept falling. The wind wasn't letting up, and it kept pushing her down. She still had plenty of height over the mountainside, yet the ground was slowly but surely getting closer despite her best efforts to climb. Jarzyl redoubled her efforts and flapped as hard and fast as she could, but she couldn't recover. "I'm stuck in the... What is this?!"
Right as she was beginning to panic, Jarzyl spotted Atlas again. The sooty-scaled young dragon was now a short distance in front and below her. His wingbeats were rapid but steady, in contrast to her frantic flapping. The sight of her friend calmed Jarzyl down slightly, and then what she needed to do was obvious.
Flying was something that was intuitive to a dragon, yet there were subtleties and nuances that had to be learned by training and practice, and there were natural instincts that were usually helpful, but occasionally counterproductive. A stall occurred when a dragon's wings stopped producing lift, usually because they had slowed too much or turned too sharply, making them literally fall out of the sky. At low altitudes, it was entirely possible to counter a stall by just flapping hard enough to make up for that lost lift, but at high altitudes this was much harder because the air was too thin. She needed forward speed.
"Blasted high-altitude stalls," Jarzyl grumbled, and then she stilled her wings and pushed herself nose down into a dive. Her descent rate increased, but the air started moving against her wings and then suddenly her flight surfaces caught. Controlling her dive, Jarzyl deliberately traded altitude for forward speed until she was closing in towards Atlas. Then suddenly she flew into a different pocket of air, and the downdraft weakened and disappeared. The air yanked at her wings as it pulled her upwards, but she could breathe a sigh of relief as she gained height again.
Atlas moved back towards her, taking up position so that they were flying side by side. The dark goggles he was wearing obscured his eyes, but Jarzyl could tell he was looking at her. "Were you caught in the downdraft too? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. I'm fine!" Jarzyl was panting from the sudden exertion, but she tried to hide it. The rush of adrenaline made her wingbeats slightly irregular, and her tail tip was trembling, though hopefully that wasn't obvious. They had both been tossed around like leaves in the wind, yet Atlas seemed to have handled the downdraft calmly and in accordance with their flight school training, with none of the brief panic that Jarzyl had briefly experienced. That panic had now faded, however, and she felt embarrassed instead. "All fine. Are... how about you?"
Jarzyl was sure that Atlas could tell she was still nervous, though he didn't call her out on it. "I'm good. That was quite some turbulence we flew through. I think it was a mountain wave--the wind is blowing from behind the mountain, but hitting the slopes forces the air upwards, then it bounces back down again on our side and is funnelled by the valley walls. Makes for some exciting flying."
"Exciting flying? Hahahaha...!" Atlas hadn't really been making a joke, yet Jarzyl found herself laughing hard, and that got most of the stress out of her system. "That was... ooh, that was a thrill." Shaking her head, she focused forward again on the mountain they were almost on top of. "Ok. Wooh. Hah. So where are we landing?"
Ikalato's Cone was capped with a snowy caldera--the very tip of the volcano was collapsed inwards, forming a circular, craterous indentation. The outer rim of the summit was all steep slopes, but some of those near vertical cliffs had ledges or balconies leading to interior caves. There was no pathway or possible means to climb up the mountain, but that was no problem for dragons.
As the two fledglings flew over the volcano top, Jarzyl was surprised to see that there was a lake mostly filling up the inside of the summit crater, with exposed bluish-green water instead of ice. There was even some sparse greenery around the crater lake, with grasses, moss, and even a few bushes visible in a border that surrounded the water, lined by rock and snow.
At the southern side there was a large area of flat ground that rose out from the lake, and against the cliff side there were more openings in the rock, similar to those on the outside of the volcano. Jarzyl could see groups of dragons strolling about near that area, and in agreement, she and Atlas both descended for a landing inside the caldera.
With a well-timed flare, Jarzyl touched down. She twisted her body from side to side in a stretch--after a good long flight, finally she could rest. Atlas landed right beside her, and he furled his wings neatly onto his back. "And we're here," he drily summarized.
Jarzyl was not inclined to be so nonchalant. "And we're here! Hooray!" Her wings were still open, and she ran over towards Atlas and threw them around him in a hug. "In the volcano!"
"Uh... yes?" Atlas awkwardly half opened one wing to pat her on the back--he still didn't know how to properly return a hug, or perhaps he didn't dare to. Jarzyl didn't mind.
"We're actually in a volcano! It's like how we used to play, and I'd pretend to a supervillain with a massive volcano lair. Hahahehe..." Gleefully giggling, Jarzyl pulled Atlas closer to her in the hug, and then she playfully bit at his neck. "Gnaw..."
"Haha..." Atlas laughed, and Jarzyl could feel his throat vibrating under her bite hold. "It's not much of a supervillain lair. This is a historical site, and now tourist attraction. There's a visitor centre over there in the cliff wall."
Jarzyl nibbled at Atlas's throat, then she released her bite and licked affectionately at his scales. "Hmm..." Releasing her embrace, she scampered over towards the edge of the lake and peered over the bluish-green waters. "Huh! Weird. Why is there water inside a volcano?"
"Well, why not?" Atlas countered. "When snow falls here inside the summit crater, it melts and forms a lake."
"But it's a volcano. I thought there would be a lake of lava, but instead there is water? I guess it just isn't hot enough to melt the rocks." Jarzyl dropped down to her belly and pawed at the stony ground, which was warm to the touch, but certainly not anywhere hot enough to be lava. The sun was shining brightly, yet at such high altitude, the ground here would have been covered by snow if not from the heat emanating from somewhere deep in the volcano.
"This is a very scenic view," Atlas murmured, as he glanced around the summit crater and across the lake.
Jarzyl flipped over onto her back, as she flicked open her wings to bask in the midday sun. The stony ground was smooth and warm against her scales, and it was nice to relax after a long flight. It definitely wasn't clean to lie about on the ground, but she hadn't left the city to be clean. "Ahh...! That's nice."
"Hehe." Atlas sounded mildly amused. He strolled up to the lake's edge and stared into the colourful, mineral-rich waters, then he glanced around again, before finally going over to Jarzyl to sit down beside her. "How did you find the flight?"
"It was a good distance. Not too far to become exhausting, but still far enough to be good exercise," Jarzyl replied contentedly.
"I thought so too," Atlas agreed.
Idly Jarzyl saw a small, rounded pebble that was lying on the ground nearby, and she picked it up and started slowly juggling it between her four paws again. The two fledglings stayed there for a while, sitting together and enjoying the calm of the wilderness. A gentle breeze rolled through the area, bringing air that was cool but humid from the nearby volcanic lake. It was peaceful, and pleasant, and a good place to enjoy with a friend.
Jarzyl did eventually get bored, though. Abruptly she tossed the pebble she had been juggling out towards the lake, where it made a small splash in the warm volcanic waters. Then she rolled onto all fours and hopped up into a stand, moving so fast that Atlas jerked in surprise. "Ok, enough of that. Let's go look around!"
"As you wish." Atlas stood up as well, and the two fledglings went to explore.
Ikalato's Cone had once been the seat of power for Clan Ikalato, and the volcano's summit walls were bored through with caverns. Ledges, balconies, and windows were carved all around the inner rim of the summit, giving entrance and ventilation to spaces where dragons had once lived in this volcano. However, it had been a long time since this area had been inhabited and most of the entranceways were blocked off by ropes, barricades, and signs saying, "Do Not Enter". A few areas even had cave ins, which fallen rocks totally blocked off passage.
The one place where they were allowed to enter was the visitor centre, which was just one particularly large cave that was open to both the inner and outer side of the volcano summit. Artificial lights lit up the inside of the rectangular space, and education signboards lined the walls providing information on the geology of the volcano and on the heritage of Clan Ikalato.
Most notably, there was a small gift shop filled with rock samples, carved models of the volcano, and even some bottles of wine from the valley. This shop was staffed by an old drake wearing wing pennants of both Mintaka and Ikalato Clan. "Greetings! How fair you two young folk, on this excellent afternoon?"
Atlas and Jarzyl both politely bowed their heads. "We're good. How are you?" Jarzyl chirped.
"All is well. Welcome to Ikalato's Cone. Feel free to look around at everything, though don't go into any of the blocked off caves--this area here is the only place where we keep the rocks reinforced."
The two fledglings went around the visitor centre, looking at the various signboards. There were a few exhibits showing relics from generations ago when the volcano had been occupied.
"Two centuries ago, when I was something like your age, we once had many families calling this pinnacle their roost. But there came a time where the cone shook almost constantly, and the ground bulged with lava," explained the old Ikalato drake. "We evacuated everyone from the settlement to nearby valleys or mountains. The cone spewed smoke and noxious gas for a decade, but never proper lava or rock. Eventually the volcano fell quiet again, yet even after some more decades to regain confidence in the mountain's stability, most of us had gotten well used to living elsewhere and we never moved back in."
Jarzyl nodded as she listened to the story. "Interesting!"
Atlas was looking at an exhibit that contained an old ceramic pot which had been recently excavated, after having been buried for more than millennia, dating back to last time the volcano had properly erupted.
As the sooty scaled fledgling was reading the plaque beside the glass enclosure, Jarzyl came trotting out from the gift shop. She moved with an asymmetric gait, walking on three legs because in her forepaw she was carrying an ice lolly--a candy made from juice frozen in a rectangular block around a little wooden stick. Jarzyl hopped over towards Atlas and turned half around, revealing to him that she was holding another ice candy stick with her tail tip. "Take it. Take it!"
Atlas laughed, then he took the candy stick. "Jarz, we haven't even eaten lunch yet."
Jarzyl waved her own ice candy stick at her friend. "Excuse me, I'm a fledgling now. That means I can decide what I want to eat and _when_I want to eat it." She licked at the candy, tasting the sweet, colourful flavour. "Who's to say that dessert must come after a meal, not before?"
"That's just how it is supposed to be done. Or maybe it's because dessert is less nutritious than proper food?" Atlas guessed, in between licks of his own ice candy.
"This has nutrition. It's frozen grape juice from the vineyards in the valley. That makes it fruit, which has vitamins and minerals. I think." Jarzyl shrugged indifferently. "Anyway, after all the effort we put into preparing and packing lunch, we are definitely still going to eat those sandwiches, right after we're done with this."
Atlas nodded. "Better to carry food in the stomach, rather than in a harness pouch."
Jarzyl slurped noisily at her frozen candy. "I've got a special plan for lunch..."
"Hmm. Bother." Back outside in the summit crater, Jarzyl strolled around near the edge of the flat plateau area and frowned out into the greenish-blue lake waters. "No, wait. This won't work. My plan won't work!"
Atlas was following beside her. "What won't work?"
Jarzyl sat back on her haunches and flipped open the chest pouch of her flight harness, then she took out one of the sandwiches that she and Atlas had made before they'd left her home. She partially unwrapped the waxy brown paper that covered it, then gestured with her sandwich. "I... I wanted to toast my sandwich over lava. I... was hoping I could put it on a stick or something and grill it over a lava pool..."
Atlas frowned, then he burst out into laughter. "Hahahaha! You really... Jarz, you really imagined this was a volcano fortress with lava pouring down the sides, didn't you? Ahahahaha..."
It was rare to hear her friend laugh so easily, and Jarzyl found herself grinning too. "Hey! How was I supposed to know that there wasn't a lava lake? It's a volcano!"
"Hahaha...!" Atlas covered her mouth with a wing. "Is that why you didn't use the toaster in your kitchen? I thought you didn't want toasted bread, but you wanted to use lava. Hehehe."
Jarzyl sighed, and she flicked her neck frill. "Bah." She used her tail tip to jab at Atlas's side, then she flicked open his flight harness pouch where he was keeping his own lunch. "Get your sandwich out, we're eating lunch. It's a shame there's no lava lake, but at least there is a scenic view."
Atlas laughed again, before doing as she said and taking out his own sandwich, which was toasted. Sitting side by side, away from home and out on a journey, the two fledglings enjoyed a simple meal together.
"This is nice," Atlas commented after a few bites.
Jarzyl glanced at her friend. "What's nice? Your sandwich, or this place here?"
Atlas nodded. "Both. Everything. It's all nice. This food, the view, the weather, the breeze, the lake, the history, the sights. You. This whole journey out from the city." With a shrug, Atlas resumed eating his sandwich. "I like it all."
"I like it too."
"It's peaceful here. Not crowded or busy here--nothing like the city at all. It's just quiet and calm."
Jarzyl thumped her tail against the stony ground. "It would be a lot less quiet and calm if the volcano erupted. But I know what you mean." With a half-suppressed yawn, Jarzyl leaned against Atlas, bumping her shoulder against his. "Hmmrrrrr..."
Atlas let her lean again him. "Tired? The day's only half done. We're still flying all the way back to the city," he pointed out.
"I'm not tired. Not yet. This was a fun... picnic, day trip, adventure thing. We should do it again. Not here, obviously, but if you know of any interesting places to visit along the city's flight path, we could visit," Jarzyl sighed contentedly. "This has been an excellent day. I enjoyed it."
Atlas nodded. "I enjoyed it too. We'll see what happens."
Later in the day, after the sun had set, six dragon fledglings sat in a loose circle around Jarzyl's bedroom, lounging on cushions, the bed, or even the floor. The group of friends was having a sleepover, and now they were playing a board game.
Caden nodded towards Atlas. "Your move?"
"I think... a forward advance for these three squadrons, to form a battle group." Atlas moved a trio of game tokens that were black in colour, shifting their position on the board. He paused for a moment, then moved another two tokens that were orange. "Make that five."
The group of friends was playing a strategy board game called Clan Conflict, where each player had to control territory to gather resources, so they could attack other players to try and seize their territory. Notably, the board game was roughly styled to emulate the drakken clan wars that had occurred half a millennia ago, so forming alliances and blocs between multiple players was an essential strategy.
Jarzyl had started with an aggressive assault on the player to her left, a bookish, blue-scaled fledgling called Pyxis. After a few rounds of gaining territory, however, Jarzyl had then formed an alliance with Atlas, who was sitting to her right. At first there had been some discussion of strategy between them, but decision-making was now entirely delegated to Atlas because Jarzyl had fallen fast asleep and left him fully in control of their combined resources.
Atlas was sitting up on a floor cushion, while Jarzyl was sprawled out on the cushion beside him, using his tail as a pillow to rest her head against and to hug with her forepaws as she dozed. "Hmm... our battle group pushes east, to that last sector," Atlas decided.
Pyxis sighed. She moved her own blue-coloured tokens across the board. "I retreat to the Windswept Plains."
"Then we've taken the whole segment." Atlas glanced over his shoulder, and he moved his tail slightly, which Jarzyl was sleeping on. "Hey, Jarz. We're winning."
Jarzyl didn't open her eyes, but her neck frill twitched. "Mrrr... rrr... That's great... zzzrrr..."
Sitting opposite the two of them, Caden exchanged a look with Pyxis, then with Indry and Nerlin, the other two fledglings who were playing the game with them. She nodded towards Atlas. "Atlas, you really wore Jarz out. What were you two doing all day, before we came over?"
Atlas calmly shrugged. "We went on a flight to check out Ikalato's Cone."
Pyxis frowned. "What's that? A new restaurant?"
"It's a volcano. Used to be an Outer Colony settlement, and now it's a historic site. We had a little picnic there," Atlas explained. "Our turn is over," he declared.
Caden smirked at Atlas. "Reeeally? Just the two of you on a picnic adventure together? Hmmm..."
"Hmmm indeed," agreed Indry, and he threw an amused, knowing look towards Atlas. "Just you and Jarz all alone in the wild. Must have been nice!"
Atlas kept his expression neutral. "It was nice, yes. Turn over!"
"Hmmrrrr..." Jarzyl made a rumbly sound that was half snore, half purr. She snuggled against Atlas's tail, comfortably content and cozy.
END