When the maid called her name, something jerked inside him. He had never heard that name before, so why did it sound so familiar? He felt like he knew the answer but it was just out of reach, the more he tried to grasp this feeling the fuzzier his head became.
"Who are you?" An innocent voice asked.
He took a step towards the chair. "My name is Tate Delmont, and your name is Aliya, is that right?"
The girl stood and the little dragonling hopped out of her lap and leaped onto the nearby bed. Now facing him he took in her face. Once again he felt something so familiar about her, but what was it? Her hair was black and straight and her eyes were deep brown. She was so slight that he was convinced a strong breeze would knock her over, her face was thin and wane but you could see a pretty girl hiding underneath the neglect.
"Wh-why are you here." She sounded guarded.
Tate looked around. "Before we get to that do you mind if we sit?"
She didn't say a word but turned and sat on the bed, the dragonling happily crawled back into her lap and began a loud purr.
Tate took the chair she had vacated and turned it towards her. "I'm here to get to know you."
She cocked her head. "Why?"
He sighed and wondered what she knew of her current situation. "Do you remember the man who visited you before?"
"Th-t-the Emp-peror." She whispers as though afraid she would summon him just by saying the title.
Tate grinned at her cuteness and nodded. "Yes, the Emperor. Did he explain his plans for you?"
She shook her head violently her eyes widening. "Is he going to send me to the gallows?" She touched her throat and swallowed. "Mother said the Emperor sends bad people to the gallows, but I swear I'm not bad not really. Okay, I did take that man's bread, but I was so hungry! If that baker just gives me a chance I'll pay him back, I'll get a job, no matter how long it takes!"
Tate was stunned, mouth open, and the torrent of words that had come from her. For some reason, he's thought she'd be too shy to say much in front of him and his first impression had been that she was scared of her own shadow.
"No," he finally recovered. "No, one is sending you to the gallows. Your dragon guarantees that," he teased.
The joke went over her head and she nodded seriously looking down at the creature in her lap, eyes watery with gratitude towards it.
Her eyes snapped up. "How did I hatch, Kilnik anyway?"
He hadn't expected her to question him. "Um, it just happens that way. When you come into contact with an egg if the dragonling likes you they will hatch for you. Is that it's name, Kilnik?"
She nodded and looked back down. "It hurt."
"Yes, it can be very painful."
"Did it hurt for you?"
"How do you know I've hatched a dragon?" He asked nonchalantly.
She pointed her finger into his face. "It's very dull but you have the same marks as me by your eye."
He was stunned, his marks had faded to the point that it really took a certain angle of light for them to be really visible and most of his friends and family had even asked if they'd disappeared, but she could see them?
"What do they look like to you?" He was very curious.
She stood and took a step closer, her little elf-like face coming close to his. "Hmm, it looks like someone painted on you with grey paint."
"Grey!"
She jumped back at his outburst. "Why are you shouting, mine are grey too. Yours are really faded though"
He must have looked really silly to this child in front of him because she began to laugh. "Why is your face like that?" She doubled over giggling.
"Uh, sorry it's just I don't think I've ever met anyone who saw the marks as grey."
It was her turn to look startled, "but they've always been grey. Whenever I saw a dragon rider from far off that was the thing that was easy to see. I asked my mother what it was, she's the one who told me marks meant Dragon Rider." She paused for a beat. "Am I going to be a dragon rider?" her voice was so hopeful in contrast to her terror of the gallows mere moments before.
He nodded and she beamed. "I like that plan, I don't want to die and I think being a Dragon Rider would be really neat!"
He found his lips twitching, really she was pretty adorable. Everything about her, her expressions, her words, the sound of her voice, her delicate features, she was just plain cute.
She lifted the dragonling under its armpits with effort, it was a third of her size and had solid bone and muscle, and looked at its face. "How long until he gets big enough to ride, he can't carry me like this can he?"
Before he could answer she snapped. "Well, excuse me I'm just asking the nice man. Don't twist my words, I believed you." She was speaking to the dragonling. She looked at Tate with exasperation. "Is your dragon like this?"
He didn't know quite what "like this" was and didn't want to bring up the fact that his dragon was gone so he just smiled and answered her main question. "No, you can't ride him like this and it will take him three years to grow into his adult size. In six months he will have a partial metamorphosis, at one year he will undergo his first full metamorphosis, and it continues like that until his last full metamorphosis at three and that's when he's fully grown and able to support you on his back."
"Well, it's not as long as I had feared."
He was pleased that her earlier guardedness had vanished entirely during their brief conversation. He still didn't know why the emperor wanted his opinion on the girl but it had been a good idea to come and talk to her. He would never admit it but he was enjoying talking with her and was looking forward to training her, just a little bit.
"Back to our original topic. What the emperor intents to do with you."
Her back went straight.
"You are a commoner so I'm not sure how much you really know about things."
"I'm not stupid." She snapped glaring at him.
"That's not what I mean. I mean about the world of nobles, about the politics of our nation."
"Poli-pu-pu-polywhatnow?"
"Politics, it's the way the Empire runs and its relationships with itself and other countries."
She opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. "I don't know anything about that, but I'm not stupid." She added.
"Not knowing something doesn't make you stupid. Not learning anything new does and we should always be learning something new." He winced when he realized he was preaching to himself. He had stopped trying anything new because he felt so hopeless. He didn't know which way to move forward in his life to the point that he had completely stagnated, at twenty-one!
He shook his head, staying on topic was hard. "Due to a lot of reasons that will take too long to go into right now, the Emperor is sending us away. We are going away for a long time and I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about being a dragon rider."
Her stunned face said it all.