City Sector Uplift part 3
#55 of The Life and Times of Jarzyl Mintaka (Slice of Life Stories)
Jarzyl picks up a snack
All around the living and dining rooms were an assortment of Mintaka drakken, largely comprised of members from Jarzyl's father's department, along with their families or guests who were to be attending the sector launch today. With smooth grace Jarzyl navigated her way around the room, occasionally pausing to politely bow her head or give a friendly greeting whenever she was recognized by anybody. As Atlas silently followed along with her, he noted that for all her playful adventurousness, Jarzyl was fully capable of acting with polite decorum if she chose to.
The only time Jarzyl did slow down to chat with someone was when they came across another young dragon--a female fledgling was dozing at the side of the room, curled up behind a couch with her head tucked under her wing. Her wings and back were a deep blue colour like the ocean, whereas her sides lightened to a cerulean blue, and her chest and underside were cyan.
Jarzyl had been making her way across the room with clear intent, but now she paused. Leaning close towards Atlas, she tried to whisper something to him, but the general chatter of the crowded room made it impossible to hear. Jarzyl spoke louder. "Is that who I think it is?!"
Atlas looked over the blue-scaled fledgling, and especially noted the wing pennants she was wearing as clan identification--instead of showing a Mintaka insignia, it was the symbol for an alliance partner of the Dirak apex clan. "I think it is."
Carefully stepping over the tails of various adult drakken who were sitting in a group to play a game of tiles and dice, Jarzyl made her way over to the blue-scaled fledgling and nudged her side with her paw. "Pyxis! That you?"
Their fellow schoolmate, Pyxis, snapped her head out from under her wing and blinked her eyes open. For a moment she glanced around, before she noticed Jarzyl and dipped her head in a friendly, sleepy bow. "Oh! Jarz. Hello. I was wondering how come I hadn't seen you around, seeing as how this is your house." Pyxis also noticed Atlas, and she bowed at him too. "Good morning, Atlas. You're looking sharp!"
"Good morning, Pyx," Atlas replied.
Jarzyl grinned and she briefly threw her wings around Pyxis in a hug, visibly happy to see another friend. "What are you doing here? I thought Clan Regil was allied with Dirak, not with Mintaka?"
"Yes. But we're the liaison partner between Dirak and Mintaka-Taslin on this big project thing." Pyxis yawned, though she tried to cover her mouth with a paw. "We, uh, handled the land and crystal resource rights for all the work here at Mizalin-on-Sky. I got dragged here cause my parents thought it would be good for me to socialize and meet other fledglings especially from apex clans, though I don't see the point since I already know you." Pyxis yawned again and blinked sleepily. "Sorry. It is way too early to be awake."
"My thoughts exactly. This early in the morning, the only people who ought to be awake are nocturnal dragons," Jarzyl muttered, glancing at Atlas. Sure enough, even amongst all the adult drakken, there were a few of them who weren't playing games, eating food, or chatting, but were instead sitting on floor cushions or leaning against walls, dozing off.
Curling up again, Pyxis lay her head down on her paws and put her wing over her eyes. "I'm just going to rest my eyes for a moment..."
Jarzyl laughed, and she nodded understandingly. "Talk to you later, Pyx." Standing up, she waved for Atlas to follow her. "Come on, Atlas. We've got places we have to be!"
As it turned out, the places they had to be referred specifically to the kitchen, where Jarzyl sought out more breakfast. Several additional baskets filled with various baked goods were sitting on the countertop, and Jarzyl picked out pastries to eat. "Mmh."
Atlas also looked over the food and grabbed a minced meat puff to munch on. The kitchen was empty but for the two of them, and even the lively chatter from the crowd in the living and dining rooms was quieter here.
With an overlarge bite followed by not quite enough chewing, Jarzyl swallowed down her pastry. Peering curious at the bread baskets, she picked out another pastry that was filled with cream and shaped in a rolled, conical shape. "Pastry cream horn." Jarzyl put the pointed tip of the pastry into her mouth, but then she suddenly froze right as she was about to bite down. Her gaze darted towards Atlas, and once again he saw that mischievous, overly curious, keenly creative glint in her eyes that meant she'd gotten another idea.
"What...?" Atlas asked her.
Jarzyl took the conical, cream-filled pastry out of her mouth. "This is a cream horn. I just realized why it's called a cream horn."
"Because it's shaped like a horn?" Atlas drily said.
"Yes!! I always thought that was just the name, but I never realized why. It's called a cream horn because it's filled with cream and shaped like a horn. Of course. It's so obvious!" Jarzyl's gaze darted upwards, towards Atlas's horns. With a wide grin and an unrestrained giggle, she put the cream horn pastry on top of her head. "Ehehehe. This is you."
Atlas tried but failed to hold back a laugh, which made Jarzyl's neck frill perk up around her head. "Hah. Ahaha. You... that is... Jarz, at some point you'll have to grow up."
"Not today." Still holding the horn pastry perched above her head, Jarzyl looked through the baskets of baked goods again. "Except you've got two horns, not one..."
"Don't stick more pastries to your head unless you intend to eat them all."
Jarzyl withdrew her paw from the basket. "Good point." She took the cream horn off the top of her head and munched down on it. The flaky pastry left crumbs all over her paw and her snout, as well as some of the white cream as she rapidly scarfed it down.
Atlas watched his friend's messy eating. "You're such a mess."
"Easily fixable." Jarzyl licked her snout clean, followed by her paw. "There."
But there was another place she had missed--on top of her head, there was a spot of white cream staining Jarzyl's scales where she had playfully stuck the horn pastry. Atlas made a gesture to his own head to demonstrate. "You missed a spot."
"Hmm? Where? Up here?" Jarzyl tried to rub her scales clean, but lacking a mirror, she kept missing. She ducked and tilted her head towards Atlas. "Can you help me?"
"Just..." Atlas reared up on his hindlimbs and leaned over--at first, he was going to simply use his paw and wipe that dab of cream off Jarzyl's head, but then without quite thinking about what he was doing, he stuck his muzzle forward and licked her scales instead. The cream was edible food, after all, and dragons commonly licked their scales to clean them.
Licking another dragon's scales was a friendly gesture of grooming. In the past Atlas had occasionally cleaned Jarzyl's scales for her, and she more rarely returned that gesture, but that had been when they were both much younger hatchlings, not the nearly fully grown fledglings they were now. Did that make a difference? Atlas wasn't sure. Friendship was still friendship, unless it was something else, which it wasn't.
Jarzyl didn't seem to think anything of it. Her neck frill perked up and she grinned. "Thanks!" She gave a quick, but warmly affectionate lick on the side of Atlas's neck, then she nodded happily. "Today will be a good day, I can feel it."
Just a short while later, Jarzyl's mother came into the kitchen. "Ah. There you two are. We're leaving for the viewing gallery. Come."
Jarzyl and Atlas both followed the azure-scaled drakka out of the kitchen. On returning to the living room, they found that a good portion of the other dragons were already gone. The remaining crowd mostly consisted of a dozen dragons who was standing close to each other at the side of the room, inside a circle that had been marked out on the ground.
Two more dragons were standing around them with wings spread. Proud and professional, these two dragons were wearing elegant flight harnesses that glinted faintly in the light.
"Ready to displace," announced one of the dragons with her wings open.
"Acknowledged. Transit to main rooftop landing zone, Accrolis Tower, sector 48B." replied the other dragon. He smoothly swept his wings in a precise gesture, and the tendrils of magic layered and shifted across his body, making his flight harness glow. "Mark on naught, from five, four, three, two, one, mark."
Pyxis was one of the dragons who was standing inside the circle. Seeing Jarzyl and Atlas, her neck frill perked up and she raised a paw to wave at them. Atlas raised his head but before he could wave back, a sphere of colourful, shimmer magic whirling into existence around the group of dragons. The magic was cast off from the outstretched wings of those two dragons standing around the circle, and then with a flash of light and a dull _pop_sound, they were all gone.
Jarzyl had barely raised her paw to wave at Pyxis, and she dropped her forelimb back to the ground. "Uggh, displacers are so cool. They just want to be somewhere, and then they're there." She bumped her shoulder against Atlas's, making him sway. "I can't wait to get my magic--I hope it's displacer affinity. I want to teleport everywhere!"
Atlas nodded. "Was that twelve passengers moved by just two displacers? That's a good ratio."
"If I was a displacer, I bet I could move a whole load of people around just by myself," Jarzyl sighed dreamily, and she half opened her wings, imagining she was channelling magic.
Two more displacers stepped forward to the circle on the ground. Their flight harnesses also looked shiny and silvery--metal weave was inlaid into the straps, helping them to channel their magic and teleport not just themselves, but other dragons as well. "Who's left? Everyone step into the marked area, please. The viewing gallery is now open, so we'll bring you there."
The last few dragons who were still in the house moved into the circle, and the two displacers stood around them. This included Jarzyl's family--her father and mother, as well as her aunt, a drake who Atlas recognized as Jarzyl's uncle, and her two hatchling cousins perched on their parents' shoulders. There were also some members of the security team, looking alert but professional as they surrounded the other dragons.
"I'm ready when you are," said one displacer to the other.
Both displacers smoothly unfolded their wings and extended them, surrounding the other assembled dragons as if they were doing a group hug. Their motions and speech were calm and practiced. "Acknowledged. We are ready for transit. Destination is main rooftop landing zone, Acrolis Tower, sector 48B. Mark on naught, from five, four..."
Atlas looked around. Standing in close proximity to him were so many dragons of Clan Mintaka, a powerful apex clan, and for a second he felt very out of place. But then Jarzyl shifted away from her parents and threw her wing over his back to hug him against her, and everything was right in that brief moment. Then the world twisted around them in a blur of motion and magic, and they were elsewhere.
TO BE CONTINUED