Dillon

"How did you come to be here?" the guardian asks, tail curling along the crooked banks of the stream. Her stained-glass wings cast darker shadows over the murky water, and bright eyes glint as she tilts her head.

"Not a clue!" the tundra replies, more or less cheerfully. He sits back to relieve the strain on his neck, looking such a towering lady in the eye.

The guardian laughs. "You might want to figure that out, then. How far is your clan? They might know."

"There aren't any clans near here." That comes easily, knowledge inscribed far deeper than the details of daily pursuits. There's a flicker of disquiet - the smell of anger, blood, and thick dust - but it whisps away into the blur of memory, replaced by wet earth, mist on water, and the scent of a friendly dragon.

"Are you clanless, then?"

"I suppose so. Are you?"

The guardian resettles her wings, tips brushing close but never quite catching in the draping moss. "For the moment, at least. The search," she adds in explanation.

"Ah." The tundra nods. He's... mostly sure he knows what that is. Words drift up from somewhere, and he adds "May your search not be long."

"Thank you!" The guardian sounds faintly surprised.

The tundra grins at her, stamping a back foot absently. His damp summer fur slaps against the bank, and - oh, of course, he had come to the stream to wash the dirt off after some time travelling. One mystery solved, for the moment.

The guardian is still looking at him. "You could come with me."

"I could." It's an odd thought. He's been alone, for... for... how long?

Too long. "I will!"

The guardian turns without another word, glancing back only briefly to make sure he's following. He is, though he has to scramble a bit to keep up. She deliberately slows her pace, and they settle into the rhythm of picking their way through brambles, between gnarled trunks and luminous mushrooms.

"What's your name?" he asks. He probably shouldn't call her 'the guardian' forever, that would get very confusing if they ran into another one.

"Rionach." She turns her head slightly, enough to catch him in one eye. "And you?"

It takes a moment to pull it up. But, "Dillon," he says.

Rionach nods and looks back ahead of them.

It's not that he wants to talk, precisely. But there's something... wrong, with silence.

"Do you want to play a game?" Dillon asks. "I think I still remember all the rules."

---

"...turn 'round again, and the pattern is gone," Rionach concludes quietly.

Dillon nods, knowing she can feel it against the curve of her side. Above them, rain patters on the rocky overhang and drips down onto Rionach's sheltering wing.

"I think that's all of it," Dillon says. It's a little uncertain; he's thought that before as they walked through the never-changing mist, only to be proven wrong when a comment from Rionach or a scent on the wind, or the shape of a patch of mushrooms had dredged up another step to the intricate game. But... "It sounds right, this time."

"It's a beautiful game," Rionach says. There's something strange in her voice.

"You can have it, if you want." Dillon says impulsively.

Rionach swings her head around to stare at him, accidentally sprinkling him with water as her wing shifts.

Dillon shakes his damp forelock out of his eyes and blinks at her. "Nobody else knows it," he says. "I'll probably forget it again eventually. It would be nice if somebody remembered."

Rionach stares at him a moment longer, then closes her eyes. "I'll take good care of it." The words sound... not sad, but weighty. Like they're settling into his memory, somewhere he won't forget.

Dillon tucks his head in between his front paws, listening to the rain. It falls gently, never quite enough to chase away the mist that says Shadow and Home

"We should look around when the rain stops," Rionach says thoughtfully. "I think this might be a good place for a Den."