I didn't want to go back to my home enclave. I'd been gone six weeks, it felt like six months, and I'd been happy with that.
Ethat had our belongings in a vine cocoon dangling from his neck. Itek had shifted into his griffon form. Sunlight shone off his gorgeous tawny pelt, revealing the dapples of his pantere heritage.
"We aren't sure when we will return, and I know it is short notice," Korr was saying to the head man-servant, with the other household staff gathered in meek submission behind him. "Several weeks. You'll all be paid your wages during this time, but there is no need to prepare meals or such. Enjoy the reduced work."
"You're taking Theia with you?" Yanice inquired, her tone properly dulcet.
Obviously, because I was standing next to Itek in riding clothes. I gripped his feathers in one hand.
"Of course," Korr said. "Why, do you think you or Delia should come along to attend to her?"
Itek scratched one talon along the stones.
"Yes, true, we don't know anything about making her presentable," Korr agreed. "I wasn't thinking we may need to travel with a lady's maid going forward."
"I can take care of myself," I said tersely.
"She does know little of presenting herself in a way that will reflect well upon your clans," Delia said, bobbing once and looking up at Korr with a viper's sweet expression.
I left Itek's side to walk up to stand next to Korr. "We aren't going anywhere with genteel accommodations. You'll be blistered and calloused and sunburned within a day. We're travelling rough."
Yanice and Delia would get a blister on their soft little butts within five miles of Haven.
Korr snapped his fingers. "You're right, pet. I hadn't thought of that. They're human and gentle-bred. They should stay here lest they become more trouble than they're worth. This mission is too important to risk on unessential luxuries or fragile companions."
He placed a hand on the small of my back and guided me towards Itek.
"Promise you won't let me fall," I hissed to Itek.
He slicked all the feathers of his ruff down and cocked his head enough to glare at me down the length of his massive beak.
I grabbed a handful of feather and braced myself on his shoulders and tried to vault neatly onto him like I wasn't scared out of my mind or rode like a sack of potatoes. Ethat launched himself into the air with a gust of wind, caught a seabreeze, and sailed into the blue.
Korr shifted, but gave me a single draconic wink.
Itek shifted his wings and worked his large pawed back feet. His body clenched, a ripple warning me, and with a tremendous spring, he launched into the air. I managed not to scream this time. Itek managed not to shoot up into the sky at a terrifying angle.
Korr glided just below us, while Ethat kept the point, drifting back and forth in the air in wide, sweeping arcs. I kept my hands twisted into Itek's feathers and my face buried. The wind still tore at me, trying to pull me off him, and sending me tumbling.
It was the fastest way back to my home enclave. It'd taken me weeks to get to Haven. It would take us days to get back my enclave to see if it was still there or not.
————————
"You know he won't drop you," Korr said. "Nothing bad has happened."
My hands were shaking so badly that morning I could barely hold into Itek's feathers. "You're a shitty diplomat."
"Has anything bad happened?" Korr asked while Itek shifted under me and rested one of his hind legs like he was a horse. Ethat looked on with mild concern.
"It rained last night," I said. We'd been travelling for three days, and were just about to where the donkey-cart guy had picked me up. The previous night it had rained, and being on Itek's wet, slick hide while my fingers slid through his feathers had utterly terrified me. They'd continued to fly through the rain until the storm had started to toss Itek around more than the larger, heavier dragons.
Now I couldn't stop shaking. I was shaking so much my teeth chattered.
The sky was still dark and threatening. It was going to rain, and the winds up above us would be choppy and rough.
"We're almost there," Korr said. "Half a day at most. You can make it that far. You walked this far."
I shook my head.
Korr sighed. Then without warning he mounted behind me, slithering close against me.
I squeaked.
"Awkward?" Korr whispered in my ear, his cock and balls pressed against my ass and of course, on Itek's spine. He wrapped one arm around my waist. "I will hold you close, my love."
I flushed. His other arm extended towards Itek's ruff and he grasped a handful of feathers, resettling himself a little more securely against the griffon's wings and side. His body hardened, and since he only had on his shift-attuned silk gauze wrap, there wasn't much fabric separating us.
He whispered. "I'm certain my body against yours like this may get... sticky... for both of us."
My body was already soaking wet against Itek's spine and it had nothing to do with the summer heat.
Korr's hand slid up my belly smoothed upwards towards my breasts, and he shifted closer, his body freezing cold and incredibly strong and dense. His lips brushed my ear, then his teeth. "Will I be the first of us? Or will you make me wait my turn?"
I shuddered all over and arched against his hands.
Itek shook himself, rattling both of us so hard our teeth clacked, then launched into the air. I yelped. The launch shoved me into Korr's crotch. He made a sound of pain as my ass impacted his balls.
Having a moist, swollen pussy is so much worse once the heat has passed. Then it's like just having a lump of concealed turkey fat between your thighs.
On the other hand, I was so grossed out by the situation between my legs and uncertain about just how to feel about the situation between Korr's legs (which was also trying to push itself between my ass crack) that I wasn't terribly shrieking in terror while Itek soared through the darkening skies. Even with gusts of hot storm wind sending us up and down through the air.
"Ass," Korr told Itek when we landed about half an hour from my home's gates.
"I don't recall being invited to your little fuck fest. I'm not a piece of furry furniture," Itek said, having transformed back into human form. The storm grew dark and angry on the horizon, and the wind smelled of ozone and water. Soon it'd be on us.
"Don't be jealous." Korr grinned.
"Jealous is not the word I'd use." Itek flung this back at Korr.
"Why did we stop?" I asked.
"So you can ride in alone, and I can make an appropriately spectacular entrance," Korr said.
I waited for him to say just kidding.
He stared at me, deadpan.
"You're kidding," I said.
He transformed into his dragon form and instantly became the brightest thing in the increasingly dark day.
"Nope, he's not," Itek said. Then he shifted back to his griffon form and flicked his tail.
Korr chuffed. It sounded like laughter.
I vaulted back onto Itek.
This time I was able to peer out around his ruff as he started to descend.
"Are we stopping to rest?" I asked as we alighted onto the sun-beaten grass by a large outcropping of rocks.
The dragons landed as well, kicking up dust and small bits of pebbles.
Itek clicked his beak several times, working his powerful front claws in the dirt, shifting. Ethat bobbed his head a few times, and Korr rumbled. A minor argument seemed to break out between all of them, then they all seemed to agree on something.
Korr shifted into human form. The winds pulled his silken fabric around and across his body, lifted his hair.
"Are we stopping?" I asked him. "Or not?"
"We're here," he told me.
"Obviously, we're here," I said, aggravated.
"No, Theia, we're here. As in, your enclave."
"This isn't my enclave," I said. "It's a bunch of rocks."
Itek moved towards the rocks. Korr crawled up ont oone of the larger ones, and laid a hand against the stone, and pointed deeper into the vast field of debris.
Itek carried me through the large stones, and about ten feet into the stones, I realized what they were: crumbled walls. It wasn't an outcropping of stones at all. As we passed the wall, the outcrop turned into an overgrown, ancient plaza with partially-intact brick floors, and the remains of an old fountain, half-crumbled, the basin in a pile of rubble, but the rain-worn remains of a distinctive family crest carved into part of the remaining bowl: Tynn's family's crest.
"But..." I said, not understanding, looking around. Everywhere I saw the enclave I remembered, but the reality was crumbled, sun-blasted, dusty, rain-worn. There were even the remains of the metal fence used for the Churn, blasted and rusted, and just some poles sticking up out of the ground in one part of the plaza.
Ethat and Korr, both in human form, walked into the plaza.
"It was here," I told them.
"We believe you," Ethat said.
"No, just a few weeks ago! What happened to it?"
"This place has been dead for a very long time," Korr said. "How long, Ethat?"
Ethat crouched down and pressed his palm to the stones. A flicker of green magic spread across everything, like the flash of fire. Then he stood. "Hundreds of years."
"No!" I shouted, tumbling off Itek and storming towards him. "No! You're wrong!"
"I'm not wrong," Ethat said, capturing my wrists before I could hit him.
Itek shifted into human form, and also did the same thing. He said, "This has been this way for a very long time. Tens of thousands of sun-cycles."
"No!" I shouted. "It was here! I remember! I was here!"
"We believe you," Ethat said.
"I don't want you to believe me! I want you to—to—make it be here!" I grabbed my hair with my hands and spun around. I shouted to the crumbling walls, "What do you want?!"
"Good question," Korr said. "We shouldn't stay here. It might want something."
"Agreed," Itek said. He shifted back into hippogryph form and clicked his beak at me.
There wasn't anything here for me... and there hadn't been for a long time. I got back onto him without protest.