2024-07-26 - [7.3] Gravity

It’s been long enough that Courth’s tremor doesn’t start up when Rhuman first slips under the flap, but when she starts getting close to the more golden among them Courth’s shell starts twitching.

That. Wasn’t. Fair!

’There are rules,’ he hisses, incapable of doing anything but fizzle and rage at the edge of Rhuman’s mind. He can’t do any more, she won’t touch him, but he still sparks.

How dare she! Trying to command them – what would she do if they were all gold, hmm? Bond to all of them? He doesn’t know why, other than the fact no one has ever mentioned it, but Courth doesn’t think it’s possible. He also doesn’t think it’s possible to command someone to be what you wanted, to love you and look at you, and make them pick you in the end. If that was the case. Gwillanth wouldn’t love Pertemarth, would she? Ansith’s rider would have been chosen by a brown, instead, all those candidates trying again would have been chosen, any number of dragons would have picked someone else or been torn in half.

’It won’t work – we’re people, not things! You, you cheat!’

The storm of his thoughts settles into the shuttle and hiss of information being put away for later, but Rhuman has made one thing abundantly clear: they do hold all the power, otherwise Rhuman wouldn’t be trying so hard to command them. The girl knows she’s wanting (in decorum, if Courth has any say in it) and tries force where nature has failed. They, tiny and unheard, hold all the cards! Their choices come first, their needs, their wants.

It buoys him, slightly, in the way that getting a satisfying answer always does.

Yes. Rhuman can prance and command all she wants, he knows it’s begging, and he knows her pressure means nothing.