38. Stone and Moon on the Way to Sky Copper

Stone sat up on the rocks and watched Moon fish in the mountain river. 

He had managed to get over his shock that a young consort would be so wild, not to mention scrawny and dirty. You think you've seen everything, he told himself. And then this happens.

Yesterday he had had to consider the obvious possibility that Moon was a real solitary, exiled from a court for some terrible crime. Or maybe just exiled because a court had collapsed or been torn apart by internal fighting. The latter was rare, more something that had happened in the histories Stone had read as a fledgling; even Indigo Cloud, burgeoning disaster that it was, hadn't hit that point yet.

But while he could imagine an ordinary consort having the wit to come up with the story Moon had told, why add the extra difficulty of pretending to not know what a Raksura was?

He's not lying about that, Stone thought, watching Moon fling himself into the water with the abandon of a fledgling. It wasn't that he knew how to hunt. Stone had actually learned back in the bad days when the court was on the move. But consorts were taught to hunt on the wing like warriors. Moon knew how to take small game from the ground, and not like an Arbora, used to hunting in groups, would.

There were other traits that were impossible to fake. Stone didn't think a consort or anyone raised in a court could manage such an unconscious, complete lack of etiquette. It was obvious it wasn't rudeness, but pure ignorance.  And Moon's spines were all over the place. Stone had met blind Raksura who had learned to control their spines because their teachers had corrected their angles by touch while they were growing up. It just wasn't a detail a Raksura would think to add.

The wary fascination Moon regarded him with couldn't be faked, either. 

As Moon washed the fish guts off his scales, Stone said, "You're not supposed to do that, you know. Raksura don't."

"Raksura don't bathe?" Moon said. He shook water out of his wings, spraying the bank. "That's going to be a problem."

***

Stone nudged Moon in the side. Moon snapped awake and flinched away from him so violently that he bounced off the rock. Moon shook his head, stared at Stone, then slumped back down and rubbed his face.

Stone watched him until Moon went from bleary to alert and wary. The crevice was narrow but sheltered from the wind, carved out of a vertical cliff and high enough to hear the wind-walkers. It wasn't exactly a place where you had to worry about predators. Stone said, "You always wake up like that?"

"I'm used to a tent," Moon said. He edged around to sit up against the rough wall.

A tent. On an open field. Stone didn't know how Moon had been able to sleep at all. It had to be worse than a forest, or sheltered rocks, like this. Even after all these turns, the fact that so many eastern Raksuran colonies stood in the open made Stone edgy. "Groundlings don't make you nervous?"

"Groundlings always make me nervous." He yawned. "Why are we awake?"

Stone shoved upright and started to roll up the blanket. "Time to fly."

Moon looked briefly incredulous but didn't argue.

***

They stopped in the fringes between the plains and the mountains, the green hills with tumbled rocks and rushing streams. After the cold days in the mountains, Stone wanted a fire, and built one on a wide grassy ledge.

They talked a little, and Moon again demonstrated a stubborn lack of knowledge or interest in Raksura. Stone wasn't sure whether he still believed the warrior Sorrow had been his mother or he was just trying to be annoying.

When Stone asked Moon what had happened to the others, Moon just said, "Tath killed them."

Stone sat there in the quiet for a time, listening to the insects and the wind moving through the grass, identifying the musk of a predator has it caught Stone's scent and rapidly left the area. Moon hadn't gotten any more communicative or less stubborn, but in the past few days he had started to relax. He was stretched out in the fragrant grass, tasting the air occasionally, as if he was actually enjoying the night, like it was something new. Maybe it was something new. Moon had never done this before, never sat by the fire with another Raksuran consort.

Stone didn't know if this was the consort Indigo Cloud needed, but he couldn't leave Moon out here alone. 

But first Stone had to get him there.  He stirred the fire and said, "Do you know why it's called the Three Worlds?"