ETTING   OME   O   LFANDRA

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Shyriath's Little Trip part 1

*PLONK*

*Shyriath finds himself face down in the dirt. This is particularly strange to him, because he had been rummaging around in his lab only a few moments ago. One second, he'd had his head stuck in a container, trying to find a piece of a equipment... and the next, he'd been in midair, and traveling with fair speed toward the ground.*

*Sitting up, he spits out some of the dirt that has managed to get in his mouth, and wipes off his face. The soil, he notes, is particularly wet here... almost mud. As he looks around, he sees tropical forest all around him.*

*Jungles being his preferred environment, this at least is enough to make him comfortable. But the fact remains that he has no idea of where he is. There is sound coming from nearby... seagulls. Ocean waves. He's near the shore.*

*Getting up and walking in the direction of the sound, he soon comes to a point where jungle ends and beach begins. Looking out at the sea, and then back at the jungle, he tries to figure out how to find his location... and, more importantly, how to get home.*

*Looking down along the beach, watching it stretch into the distance, he sees... something... coming out of the water. Something big, at least as large as him. It also appears to be holding a net.* A thinking creature? Maybe it can tell me something!

*He runs down the beach, yelling.* Hey! HEEEEY! Excuse me...

*When he gets within about a hundred feet, he begins slowing down. The creature has stopped, and turned to look at him. It is green, with gold eyes, but Shyriath cannot make out much more (he has managed to get an inordinate amount of sand in his eyes while running). Trying to clear his vision, he rubs his eyes again. He is panting heavily, as his rather poorly built body is unable to sustain hevay activity of any sort. Shyriath says, with audible relief:* I... do you know where this is? What is this place? *As the creature continues to stare at him, he reliazes that it may not even undestand the language. Finally cleaning out his eyes enough to see, Shyriath takes a good, long look at this being... and his blood turns ice-cold.*

*It is female dragon. This, in itself, is not enough to explain Shyriath's reaction, despite the fact that she is far from ugly. She is covered in scales of a deep green, with aqua on her undersides. Silver spines protrude from the tip of her tail and her head and back, supporting blue fins. Long, spindly fingers and toes have webbing of the same shade of blue. Her hostrils are set in her forehead, just ahead of the first spine of her dorsal fin. Her eyes are golden, and glow with an inner light.*

*She looks a LOT like Shyriath's mother.*

*She isn't, of course. Shyriath has only seen one pure-blooded Sa'arunai'itai in his entire life... that being his mother, Lara'atuna... and this dragon's resemblance to her is largely in racial characteristics. It is as if a human with white skin had known only one person with black skin, but for his whole life, and then suddenly been
introduced to another one; he would consider the general resemblance to be striking, but there was no danger of not being able to tell them apart.*

*She was only slightly larger than Shyriath, which meant that she wasn't fully grown yet, probably no more than a century old, and very likely less than that. From the way she was looking at him, one could tell she was amused at this funny-looking creature.*

*Shyriath fell into the tongue that his mother had taught him so long ago.* -A Sa'arunai'itai?-

*She did not cease to look amused.* -Of course I am. What else would I be? You, on the other hand, are something the likes of which I have never seen.-

*Shyriath speaks with urgency.* -Where am I? Where?-

*She sighs* -Sal a'Kura, of course.-

*Shyriath does not look happy with this. The Sal a'Kura he knows, the one he'd hatched in, was a desert, completely lifeless. Not THIS. But his mother had said that, when she was a child, when all the Sa'arunai'itai had been alive, the island had been a paradise...*

*Urgently, Shyriath asks another question.* What year is it now?

*She is beginning to look exasperated.* It is the 78,302nd year of the Age of the Sun. Why do you ask these things? Everyone knows them.

*Shyriath runs through the dates in his head. He himself had hatched in 82385... the Great Extermination happened in 78305... his mother had hatched in 78292. This would be the reign of First Mother Sama'aranu... his mother, Sama'aranu's duaghter, it about ten years old... everyone but the Royal Family will be killed in three years... And he himself won't hatch for another four thousand years or so.*

*He has moved only a few hundred miles in distance... his lair, on Halai Island, is practically the next island over from Sal a'Kura... but almost five thousand years back in time.*

*He flees across the beach, screaming in a rare fit of fury. The female, watching this display for a moment, shrugs and begins walking toward the village. Meanwhile, Shyriath breaks down in tears. His teleportation power can send him to different worlds, different universes... but the power to travel time is one he never learned, which the Sa'arunai'itai had never learned. He cannot get back home by himself. And his daughters... shy Sarath, curious Nale... were without their father. Zillix would take care of them... but Shyriath needed them. He had waited too long to find a family and a home just to lose it all again. If he stayed here, he would die... if not from sadness, if not from old age (he has, to his approximation, 3200 years of life left), he will be killed by the BEAST, along with everything else here, in three years.*

*Left without anything else to do, he lies in the sand of the beach and weeps, as the tide gently recedes, and the sun sets.*