Dawn's Light

Chapter 19

After a pause, Irin swiveled his neck to look back to Xan with a disappointed countenance and exhaled in a sigh.

"Yes, the dramatic voice was necessary!" Xan huffed as he slid off of Irin's back and gave the dragon a determined stare, then struggled to keep his facade as the dragon released a deep breathy chuckle, "you don't have to laugh...," his mumbled voice raised an octave as he turned away.

Verbena's nostrils flared in her nasal exhalations of withheld chuckles as Celia also dismounted, 'he squeaked!' She flashed a draconic grin that widened slightly as she released a bit more of her amusement.

Celia decided not to snicker and used the awe-inspiring landscape to keep her distracted from the laugh-inducing moments that surrounded her, "is this the forest the map mentioned?"

Xan, who was brought back into focus by the question, shrugged. "Maybe, but I've never heard of a forest."

"This is definitely different than anything else I've ever seen," Celia admitted as she looked at the non-white landscape. "Why is there no snow on the ground here when everything else is blanketed in ice?"

"I never figured that out either, but this is where we wait until we are noticed." Xan adjusted the roped that tied his sack to his back, then looked to Verbena and Irin, "you two should go find a place to stay out of sight, the Ulven might hurt you." After a pause, Xan studied Verbena's harness. Some of the frozen natural oils that coated Verbena's skin had coated the straps of the harness and turned it to an off-white. However, the pale brown saddlebags under her wings on her sides were still extremely visible in contrast to her white camouflage. "We are going to have to bury the harness and the saddlebags in the snow somewhere to keep them hidden."

"What?" Celia took a step back in surprise, "what are you talking about?" She looked to Xan to alleviate her confusion.

"The saddlebags will peg her as a non-wild dragon," Xan explained. "Her straps are fine, since they are much closer to white, but Irin and I only noticed that she was not wild because of the bags," he pauses, "you can remove the harness, right?"

Celia nodded and hesitated, then approached Verbena and gently moved her wing. "I don't want to lose this, so I hope you know of a way we can mark where we have buried this." She untied the saddlebags on Verbena's right side the side she is on, then did the same for Verbena's left side. Once the bags were unsecured, Celia pulled them off of the dragonet's back.

"Wait, you can just take off the saddlebags?" Xan blinked in surprise, "Then we might as well leave it at that," he seemed a bit antsy, "her harness is not all that visible anyway." He glanced to Irin and seemed to send a telepathic message to him.

Irin nodded to his rider, then took off into the clouded sky.

Celia flinched as pellets of clumped snow and dirt flew towards her face and pelted the glass covering her eyes but thankfully did not leave any cracks. "Why did you send him up there?" She faced Xan.

"Lookout," Xan replied as he strolled over to Celia and threw Verbena's saddlebags over his shoulder, "just in case that the Ulven come over here before we are ready for them. This needs to be hidden and Verbena needs to be farther away before they find us if our plan is going to work. So we need to bury this in the snow, mark it, then see about encountering the Ulven." He began to walk into the deeper snow, but each step was harder and harder for him.

Instead of stupidly trudging into the snow, Celia climbed onto Verbena's back an allowed her to take Verbena into the deep snow. Despite the dragonet's size, her large paws allowed her to easily walk on the snow without sinking as much as a human. 'Need help?' Verbena asked Xan once she had taken the few steps needed to catch up to him, but Xan could not hear the dragonet's telepathic message.