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  [colpse]Chapter One Hundred and Eleven - Seize the Date

  It was during breakfast--the inn had a nice serving of ‘bun acceptable’ foods, which mostly meant that I got a pte full of fruits and some still-astries (no eggs!) to mun while the others chowed down on sausages and such--that the thought hit me.

  “Ah, we didn’t tell Rhawrexdee when to meet, did we?” I asked.

  “Who is that?” Booksie asked.

  “Oh, that’s the dragon. We’re supposed to meet him today,” I expined.

  Booksie nodded. “Ah, yes, the dragon. Did you want help with that?”

  I brightened. “We’d love help! What do you know about romance?”

  The bun flushed. “I might have read a book or two. And I’ve been on my share of dates and such. I never did find someohat was just right for me though.”

  I reached over and patted her head. “Then we’d love your help! I’ve never really been on a date and, um.” I looked towards Amaryllis, the question obvious in my eyes.

  “Don’t look at me that way, you daft moron,” Amaryllis said. “I don’t think harpy-dating s would apply in this sort of situatiardless of if I did or did not date anyone before.”

  “But you didn’t?” I asked.

  She turned her head away from me, stabbed a sausage with the tip of a talon, then tore a bite out of it.

  “Awa, I, I’ve been on dates before.”

  Amaryllis choked on her sausage.

  Awen wilted under our biares. Even e was looking at her weird. “Aw-awa, it was only a few times?” she shrank deeper into her seat. “Um. With some noblemen, and, and with some chaperones. Nothing untoward happened.”

  I shifted my seat so that I was a little closer and grabbed her hands. “Tell us! Was it romantic? Did you kiss anyone? Did the boys have nice s?”

  Awen shook her head. “It wasn’t that nice. We just walked around and they bought me some things that I didn’t really want, and sometimes, when the chaperones were busy, they would get handsy. I didn’t enjoy it at all.”

  “You poor thing,” I said.

  “Perhaps I’ve been fortunate,” Booksie said. She was tapping a bit of lettuptively against her . “My first dates were... mixed, but some of the ter ones were fun. I was a little older though. This was a few years before I left for Port Royal.”

  “They went well?” I asked. “How e?”

  “Ah, the boys were nice. We didn’t have too mu on unfortunately, but they were attractive. I ’t really pin what made them fun or not. Sorry. Waking up somewhere different the m is always awkward though.”

  A terribly inappropriate giggle escaped me at the same time as Awen gasped. Amaryllis just rolled her eyes, but her bsé attitude couldn’t hide her blush.

  The sudden screaming and yelling and general sounds of pani outside had us all bolting to our feet.

  I picked up my shovel and pad shot out of the door after my friends who were stumbling down the corridors of the inn. We burst out onto a street where people were running. It was easy enough to guess where Rhawrexdee had nded. We just o wade through the crowds moving in the opposite dire.

  The closer we got the tre of town, the fewer people there were. Only a few very brave guards remaihe armour over their legs g together with fright.

  We slipped past a rough formation of them and stepped onto the town square. Judging by the half-destructed scaffolding and the ck of a stage, the people in charge of yesterday’s festival had been hard at work taking things apart.

  That would be plicated somewhat, I imagined, by the dragon currently fttening one of the stages.

  Rhawrexdee was still as grand and formidable as when I had first id eyes on him. More, maybe. His scales seemed freshly ed. Maybe he’d taken a dip in the o? His cart-sized head turowards us and his lips peeled back to show off twin rows of glistening crocodile teeth. “Ah, you arrive at st. I was afraid that I’d o start destroying parts of this town until you scurry out.”

  I felt Awen and Amaryllis slip behind me, and Booksie was rooted to the spot, ears ramrod straight above her head. “Hello Rhawrexdee!” I called out. “We weren’t sure when to expect you, so we were having breakfast at the inn while we waited.”

  The dragon tilted his head to the side. “Fair enough, I suppose. I myself despise skipping breakfast. A sheep a day keeps the teeth white and so on.”

  I nodded along. “Sure. I’m gd you showed up.”

  “I am nothing if not punctual, and also a dragon.” He shifted, long neck moving sinuously like the snake preparing to strike so that I had to look up to meet his eyes. “Now, I am certain you spent the st fereparing to teach me how to court...” he go my right where Amaryllis was standing. “Beautiful princess-y maidens?”

  I worked to keep my smile on. “Yup. We’ve been doing, ah, nothing but work on that. This eime.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  Oh, good, he was gullible and I wasn’t going to be eaten.

  “Yuuuup. We just o, um, talk. Over there. For a moment. Hey, do you speak the local tongue?”

  “I do not,” Rhawrexdee said. “Though my mother did make me take lessons to learn a Pyrowalkian. We do o keep to some of the older ways, after all.”

  “Brilliant!” I said as I grabbed onto my friends and dragged them off to the side. We stopped o a pile of lumber. “We need a pn.”

  “Awa, we could run?”

  I shook my head. “He fly.”

  Booksie raised a trembling hand. “May I ask... what exactly is going on?”

  I swallowed. “Well, see, it goes something like this. That nice blue dragohere wants to either learn how to vince princesses to go out with him, or he wants to eat people and take all of their gold. So, we just o, um, teach him how to date princesses.”

  “Ah,” Booksie said. She turo eye the dragon that was currently pig at what was no doubt some poor sheep’s innards stuck between his teeth. “And we ’t run?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Booksie took a deep breath to settle herself. “Well, we could try to teach him what he wants to know.”

  “Loath as I am to agree, the bun is right. If the dragon leaves satisfied he fly off to be someone else’s problem,” Amaryllis said.

  “So, you’re volunteering to date him?” I asked.

  Amaryllis squawked. “World no.”

  “Then we’re in a bit of a pickle,” I said. Rhawrexdee didn’t seem like that bad a guy, once I looked past his tendency to eat cute fluffy sheep and also people. What he wanted wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary. Really, he just wao be loved, and that erfectly okay. I wahe same thing, though I was still waiting for the perfect person to show up before I started thinking about actual romance.

  “Awa,” Awen said. “If, if we have to, then we should try our best. Um. Miss Booksie maybe help? And we coach the dragon on how to be nicer?”

  I nodded. “That’s it. We just need someone, ao act as his date.” I stared at Amaryllis.

  She gred back. “You... you moronic, half-witted, cretinous, imbecile.... Fine!”

  “You’ll do it?” I asked.

  “That, or I’ll ask the dragon to eat you in exge for the date.”

  Grinning I swept Amaryllis into a quick hug. “Thank-you, thank-you!”

  She shoved me off with a huff. “Thank me if I mao talk us out of this mess.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That might be a problem. He said he only speak dragon and something called a Pyrowalkian.”

  Booksie looked up, her ears perking. “He speaks Tanyintian?” she asked. At my fused look, she tried to crify. “It’s an old, old dialect. Before the founding of the Pyrowalkian Empire there was a kingdom called Pyro. Before the Pyro family--for which the kingdom was named--came into power, the region that would bee this kingdom art of a nation called Tanyint. It is said to have been the most powerful nation to ever exist, until it slowly fell apart over the course of a tury or two. I think the dragons had an alliance of sorts with their ruling family.” Booksie scratched at her cheek. “Sorry. It’s just an iing history. I speak it a bit. There are a lot of older books on magic, especially enting, that used Tanyint script.”

  I grinned. “Well, now you have an excuse to practice,” I said.

  “Ah, I suppose. I don’t think the dragon is really into books or anything though.”

  I paused. My friends were in this because we had kinda promised to help, and I had dragged them into the mess. It was my fault, but I had the best of friends, and they were there for me. Booksie, oher hand, was a friend, but not as close a friend, and she didn’t deserve to be dragged into a heap of trouble. There was still plenty of time for her to run bae. “If you want to leave, because it’s safer, I give you the gold I have? It might help?”

  Booksie shook her head. “No! Please, dragons are very iing, and the opportunity to talk to one shouldn’t be missed out.” She blinked. “Speaking of. Where did you learn how to speak dragon?”

  “Ah.”

  “Could you teach me, just a little?” There was a very worrisome fervor in her eyes. “There are some texts that have phoic dragon writings in them. Just knowing what they’re about could increase their value by so much.”

  I rubbed at the bay neck. “I’m kind of a Riftwalker.”

  Booksie was suddenly very close. “Truly?” she asked with the sort of tone someone used to tell a hated rival that they were in check. It was soft and husky and came out as a purr and I was scared.

  “Awa, the drago look very, um, patient,” Awen said.

  That snapped Booksie away. She ran her hands down the front of her sweater and coughed lightly to one side. “Yes well, I’m all for this pn, as long as it doesn’t prove too untenable.”

  “Right!” I spun on a heel and strolled over to Rhawrexdee. “Heya! We’re all set,” I said.

  “You are?” the dragon said.

  I nodded. “We’re all set right?” I asked my friends.

  “No, no we really aren’t.” Amaryllis said.

  “See, they agree,” I said to Rhawrexdee. “So, today we’ll be going, uh, over the essentials of dating?”

  Rhawrexdee snorted. “That hardly sounds practical.”

  Once my hair resettled from being blown about by his snort, I took a moment to think about things. “Well, that’s because we want to make sure you’re ready for, uh, this afternoon's practice. A big, practiot-real-at-all date. Totally fake.”

  “You’re putting a suspicious amount of emphasis on the uy of this date.”

  “That’s because if it’s a fake date, if you make a little blu’s okay. Um. This is Booksie, one of my friends. She speaks a Pyrowalkian, a little, and she’ll be your teammate. Awen and I will be going ahead to, um, calm people down. And Amaryllis will be your date.”

  Rhawrexdee perked up at that. “Truly?” he shifted to stare at Amaryllis who gred right back. “She doesn’t seem happy about it.”

  “That’s... uh. She’s going to be pying hard to get. So that way you’ll learn how to get... that.”

  “Hrmm, brilliant! And to think my sister said I should just eat you all and give up oire situation. Hah! Shows her!”

  I smiled. “I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun.”

  ***