Pass. Its voice reverberated through her.
The fields fizzled harmlessly against the crawler. She was out unshielded on Earth’s surface for the first time. Sunniva took her hand off her bracelet and felt the tension ease out of her shoulders. Her dragon nudged at her, expectant.
Once the crawler was set there was no need for Sunniva to stay. She wriggled out on to the flatbed and squeezed between the equipment. Marcus was wearing his jacket again and had his back to the side rail, scanning their surroundings, his body alert and the blaster in his lap. The modifier stud flashed in the sun.
Volunteered.
Knowing she could make him answer made her reluctant to ask.
“I’m going to shift and overfly the sensor points,” she said to Marcus. “I won’t be too long.”
Sunniva pulled off her jacket and top, exposing the thin supportive dragonmesh underneath. Unlike the Kervilli matriarch, she couldn’t afford a whole outfit. She toed off her shoes and wriggled out of her pants, holding on to a sensor cradle for support as the flatbed swayed, and added them to the pile with her socks.
She glanced over at Marcus and saw that he was staring fixedly out of the crawler at an innocuous chunk of rock, a faint flush along his jawline.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He didn’t look at her.
He’d been disturbed by the matriarch shifting as well. She supposed he was unlikely to have good associations with dragons, and felt a pang of guilt.
You haven’t hurt him. Her dragon sounded impatient. Are you ready?
Sunniva stepped up to the edge of the flatbed. All right. She reached for her dragon.
Her feet always were always first to change, the nails lengthening and the bones elongating to match them, her weight shifting and the joints creaking with an intensity just short of pain. Sunniva leapt from the slow-moving crawler, letting her shifted feet hit the rocky trail and absorb the sting of impact. Lavender scales rippled up from her talons, spreading across the bare skin; when they met the dragonmesh it flickered into life and sank into the scales, invisible. Her bracelet, part of the mesh, shifted size as she did. Sunniva rolled her shoulders to extend her wings out, letting air curl over the delicate membranes.
As the change took her the crawler seemed to shrink, and the air currents in the sky became faint cords of light.
Her bracelet gave her the map. Sunniva leapt up, beating her wings fiercely to give her enough height to reach the nearest updraft, going up until the crawler was barely a dot and her lungs strained at the air.
Higher, further, faster… She gave her dragon her head, reveling in the freedom she loved, allowing her to experience this new world. Strange, without the power networks, but intriguing. Open. She folded her wings and plummeted down again, past the peaks, past the trail, and swooped across a valley low enough that her belly skimmed the wet grass.
Keep away from the human settlements.
I know, I remember, her dragon said, and caught another current to take her up the cliff face, scarcely a wing-length away from bare rock and then up and into the open sky again, chasing after a low-lying cloud and ducking in and out of it. Sunniva let her play for another ten minutes or so before gently urging her back on task, surveying her planned locations for the sensors now that she wasn’t limited to maps.
Three of the locations were workable, but one — the third on her list — wasn’t, the rocky outcrop too exposed and unstable, the stone beginning to crumble. She flew over it and in a wide loop, looking for alternatives. The clouds had moved in, and a light drizzle fell around her. Water droplets beaded on her scales.
On the other side rocky pinnacles jutted up through low scrub, fat grey pillars whose placing almost looked intentiona
l. But there were no signs of humans, and it hadn’t been marked on the map. She angled her wings into the wind, shedding height, and went over it again. At the upwards curve of the hill where the scrub thinned a small group of weathered stones clustered together, as if sheltering each other. Perfect. She climbed up one last time and glided back down to the crawler, easily picking out Marcus’ bright hair.
She signaled for it to come to a stop and back-winged to slow her flight, claws grabbing for the ground next to it. Her dragon’s regret at landing bled through her, but there was satisfaction as well.
I’ve missed this.
Marcus swung himself over the crawler’s side-rail and took a step towards her. He had to tip his head back to see her, their usual height difference reversed, his hair plastered against his scalp. He looked determined, as if set on some action he already regretted.
He took another step, his eyes intent on her, as if studying something so shy and rare it would vanish if he stopped looking. Sunniva tipped her head to one side, curious, and Marcus reached up one hand to the height of her jaw. His fingers were trembling as he reached out and traced lightly along the curve of her chin.
I like that. Her dragon sounded contented. Sunniva felt a great deal more than that. Where Marcus was touching her, she felt sensitized to the point of unbearable intensity, almost able to detect the ridges of his fingerprint. She shifted her weight, leaning into the touch.
Your turn, her dragon said, and gave Sunniva a mental shove, triggering the shift.
Sunniva’s scales rippled into nothingness, her body shrinking back to its usual height and her field of vision becoming flatter and subtly different in color. Her dragonmesh sparked as it settled into place. Marcus’ touch still burned on her skin.
Looking up at him was like looking into the sun, all that focused attention, welcoming and terrifying at once. She could see tiny golden hairs in the dent above his lower lip.